Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

I-10 to Gila Bend and we turned right (south) toward Ajo. Getting off the interstate turned into a beautiful drive, and it was hard to believe how green the desert was. There must have been some rain recently, because the desert floor was green with grasses and other flora, and it was a lovely route. This highway (85) heads to the Mexico border, where Lukeville, AZ and Sonoyta, Mexico share a border crossing. This is also the direction of one of you-know-who’s border wall projects and there was a lot of evidence of work going on. But first, we had to pass through the hamlet of Why. There was a coyote (4 legged variety) standing in the shade of one of the signs there, but I couldn’t get a photo of it. I found this hilarious.

We pulled into the town of Ajo, about 15 miles north of the National Monument, and we needed to freshen up and re-supply, so we decided to stay overnight here. We pulled into an RV park on the highway just north of the main part of town, and Lucky John (He’d “rather be lucky than good”) got the very last space. 75% of the park is full of border wall construction workers, who have taken up residence in this town as it’s the closest services to their work site. Once we hooked up and got set up, we got our bikes down and took a ride down to the Elk’s Lodge, cause you know I’m a member now and we had to go check it out, and the bar opens at 4pm. We visited with the bartender and another local Elk member and got a little read on the town and it’s story.

Ajo was a copper mining town, and the bartender who was our age told us about when she was a kid and everything was provided by the Big Company, and she said she didn’t even realize you had to pay for things till she was around 12 years old. She said there were movie theaters, soda fountain downtown, and lots of things for them to do. The Big Company provided everything for all the townspeople. Everyone worked at the mine. There was a population of around 10,000 at the height of the mining operation until it closed down in 1985. Now many of the residents are snowbirds or winter residents, and it’s pretty quiet except for all the construction workers there for the wall.

We took a look at the mine on our way out of town and it’s a pretty ragged scar on the land. You can really see it on a Google earth map, and you can see it and the tailings from every direction coming into town.

Doing what we do, we rolled into OPCNM without any reservations, and got lucky, cause that’s better than good, and got a really nice campsite for the night. In order to stay a second night, we had to go online and reserve it, and amazingly because everywhere in the world has some kind of cell coverage except Forest Ranch, I got on, secured our site for a second night, and we settled right in. This facility was in excellent condition, really well organized, and our site even had a spot of shade.

Since it was later in the day by the time we got there, we just had enough time to go for a 1.5 mile hike called Desert View, which gave us an amazing look at the valley below and we could see all the way to that wall they’re working on. Unfortunately, it’s bisecting an important biosphere of habitat and untouched desert landscape, and according to a Sierra Club biologist who had recently visited Ajo, was endangering many species of wildlife by its mere existence. So many animals cannot pass through the metal structure, whether by flight or foot. Otherwise, the desert view was breathtaking.

Incidentally, there were a few Organ Pipe cactus to look at as well as ocotillo, barrel, prickly pear, cholla, saguaro, and several others I can’t recall.

Ok, wrap your head around this one: Saguaros (photo below) don’t sprout an arm until around 90 years old. They live to be over 200 years old. Any thoughts on the age of this old dude? When they’re young, they sprout in the shade of another plant or tree in the desert to begin their growth journey. As they outgrow their shade companions, they eventually kill the competition by drawing water away, like a slow, hot, dry desert death. It’s the way of things out here.

It was absolute bliss riding out there, listening to birds, enjoying the solitude. Indeed it was so much fun that we really didn’t notice that we were climbing, climbing, climbing. We saw no one. We had the place to ourselves. When we got to the halfway point, which was a trailhead with a beautiful picnic area, we stopped for lunch. At this point due to the climbing, our bike batteries were losing some bars, and so were our body batteries ( I know, Janine, we’re total bike wimps! The last time I rode was at Burning Man in 2018!!!). We decided to shelve the hike for our next visit, and push on to complete the loop.

We were thinking that since we’d been going up, up, up, that the second half of the ride we’d be going down, down, down, right? That way we’d do fine with the diminishing batteries on the bikes. We were wrong. Up, up, up we went, for a few more miles. At some point, John’s battery started flashing, causing some awareness as to the assistance aspect of the bike. We finally began a descent, white knuckled, no shoulder, and steep drop off on the side. Also at this point, since we were going against traffic, and folks had finished their leisurely mornings and decided to do a lunch drive, we started to encounter more vehicles coming at us. The bright spot is that we didn’t have to worry about traffic sneaking up behind us.

We managed to complete the trip, ending up pedaling our butts off because both batteries were dying. It was satisfying and exhausting, and deserved a beer at the end. Moral of this story, charge the batteries full before doing a ride like this again. Easy peasy.

In the evening at OPCNM, there is a beautiful amphitheater a short hike from the campground with naturalist programs, so we had an early dinner, grabbed our jackets (and a traveler cup of wine) and went down to listen to a Ranger talk about the animals in the local desert. Very interesting, and we recognized several that we’d already seen on our hikes and bikes.

We were really impressed with every single aspect of the National Monument from the services to the natural beauty of the place. This is definitely a must-return place for us.