Organ Pipe Cactus Nat. Monument, Ajo, Tucson AZ

Mar. 8, 9 & 10

We are in a nice campground in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument which is located along the Mexican boarder.  Our friends, Bernie and Rea from Alaska are here with us.  Friday we decide to go across the boarder to Puerto Penasco known in the US as Rocky Point.  It is about 60 miles from the boarder and located along the Gulf of California.  Lots of large hotel dot the shore and this is a very popular place for college kids to come for spring break.  The town was ready for the spring breakers.  We had a fun day shopping along the main part of town and had a great seafood lunch in a open air second story restaurant.  We brought home fresh shrimp and cooked them and had shrimp cocktail for dinner that night. 

Twin Peaks Campground
Organ Pipe Cactus

Puerto Penasco Mexico

Dick, Barb, Rea & Bernie

Along the waterfront

Seafood lunch

Saturday we drove one of the scenic roads in the park which is in the heart of the Sonoran Desert.  We saw many kinds of cactus, plants and trees.  There were markers along the way pointing out things to look at.  We even saw a crest growing on some of the arms of an organ pipe cactus.

Crested organ pipe cactus

Beautiful flowers along the road

Double arch

Mar. 11 & 12

Today we drive 35 miles north and spend the night in Ajo AZ.  It's a small town with a now closed copper mine.  There are large mountains of tailing's on the edge of town.  We took a drive out on the desert and saw an Indian cemetery.  We stopped to see the old open pit mine.  On Sunday we say good-by to our friends, Bernie and Rea.  We are going to Tucson and they are going to Yuma. 

Indian cemetery out in the desert

cactus in bloom

The sign says it all!!
We saw these warnings anywhere close to the boarder

Old copper mine by Ajo

Mar. 13

Tuesday we go to Saguaro National Park Eastern side and drove the scenic road around the park.  The desert isn't as pretty as it was out of Apache Junction. 

picture made out of saguaro cactus wood

cactus in the park

crested saguaro cactus

Mar. 15

Thursday we spend the day at Kitt Peak National Observatory.  It is the site of the largest collection of astronomical telescopes in the world with 25 optical and 2 radio telescopes.  It is a working observatory and the astronomers were sleeping in the the dormitories.  We were able to visit 4 telescopes  One was a solar telescope and could see sun spots on the sun.  We saw another large solar telescope, a 2.1m and 4m telescopes.  They offer a night program but were sold out until the first of April.  Next time we will get tickets over the Internet. 

Solar Telescope

 Inside 4m Telescope

4m Telescope

A view of some of the telescopes

Mar. 16

Friday we drove to Tombstone and Bisbee.  In Tombstone we walked around the town and looked in the many shops and had lunch in the saloon.  We stopped at Boothill Grave Yard were many pioneers are buried from 1878 to around 1884. 

Tombstone AZ

O.K.Corral

Boothill

In Bisbee we saw another open pit copper mine that is no longer being worked.  Walked around the downtown and then headed back to Tucson.

Mar. 17

Today we go to the Asarco Mission Mine.  This is a working open pit copper mine and we went to the edge of the pit and saw the enormous trucks moving the ore out of the pit to the mill.  In the mill we saw how the ore is crushed into a fine powder and the extraction process is begun.  The pit is 2 miles by 1 3/4 miles and 1500 feet deep.  One ton of ore produces 10 pounds of copper.  They also extract some gold in the process.  It was a good tour and enjoyed seeing how copper is mined.

Dump truck
capacity 170 tons

Trucks moving ore

Crushing cylinder inside mill

We also visited Mission San Xavier del Bac which is referred to as the "white dove of the desert"  This is an active Franciscan mission is located on the Tohono O'Odham Indian Reservation.

Mission San Xavier del Bac

The ceiling

Inside the ornate church

We finished the day with a visit to DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun.  He is a well known Arizona artist and the gallery displayed more than 15,000 DeGazia original

DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun

Mar. 18

The weather turned cold and rainy.  There are winter storm warnings all over the state of Arizona.  Heavy snow is falling the the north and the mountains around Tucson have snow on them.  We did grocery shopping today to get ready to move tomorrow.  We decided to go the Casa Grande, just south of Phoenix for three days and hopefully the weather will warm up and the snow melt by Thursday so we can go to Sedona. 

Mesa AZ, Feb. 16 to March 8

Feb. 16 Jeep trip in desert.

The day after getting back from Hawaii we went on a Jeep trip in the desert.  The poppies and other wild flowers were in bloom on the hillsides and along the road.  The desert is surprisingly green.  We have seen lots of cattle grazing and there are water tanks, some with wind mills to pump the water, all over the desert.  We went out with the Jeep group about twice a week.  Most of the time we cooked lunch over a campfire with everyone bring food to go with the main dish.  We had very good lunches and very innovative meals.  Most of the time there were around 8 Jeeps on a trip and very well planed with GPS coordinates at every turn.  They have been out on the desert many times and know their way around.

Following the road through desert

Arizona Poppies

A view of the beautiful mountains and desert

Feb. 21, Jeep trip

old mine

balance rock

Feb. 23, Jeep trip

On this trip we came upon an old shack called Sugar Shack.  It was built into the hillside had lots of things people had left behind when they visited.  The refrigerator whick is built into the back wall was full of canned goods. 

Sugar Shack

Feb. 25, Wickenburg

Today we drove to Wickenburg to check out the old historic town.  There are bronze statues around the center of town to tell the story of the history of Wickenburg.  We visited the Desert Caballeros Western Museum which was filled with many western paintings, sculptures, artifacts, cowboy gear and memorabilia.  They did a very good job of depicting life in the old western town.  A 200 year old mesquite tree served as the town jail where criminals were chained to the tree to serve out their stantence or a drunk get sober.

Jail tree

school teacher

store

bar

kitchen

sculpture in front of museum

Feb. 25, Carefree

On the way home we stopped in Carefree.  They have a beautiful cactus garden with a large sundail in the center town.  There is a crested Sagauro which was transplanted in the park.  Crested Sagauro's are very rare.  There are shops surrounding the park. 

cactus garden

Crested Saguaro

Feb. 27, Jeep trip

Hillside  covered with large Saguaros

Line up of Jeeps

This is the best crested saguaro we have seen

women on the trip

The guys

Feb. 28, my birthday dinner at Rustler's Rooste

We had a terrific view of the city from our table.

March 1, Jeep trip

Having lunch
We had chicken and shrimp stirfry

March 3, Tonto National Monument

These cliff dwellings were built during the 1300's by the Salado culture and they occupied these dwellings for approximately 300 years.  They overlook today's Theodore Roosevelt Lake.  We climbed a steep trail up the mountain side to access the dwellings.  They are 85% origional and we could even see the smoke from fires within the dwelling on the walls and celing.

View from the top

smoke on walls and celing

view from the parking lot

March 3, Tortilla Flat

We stopped in the little wide spot in the road, Tortilla Flat and had ice cream cones.  The Apache Trail is paved to this town and then it turns to dirt and windes around the mountains and a couple of lakes for about 25 miles.  Pavement returns close to Roosevelt Lake.

Tortilla Flat

March 5, Jeep trip

This was our last Jeep trip with this group from Apache Junction.  There were eight regulars who went on most trip and they were all from different states.  We had people from New York, Ohio, Minisota, Michigan, Illinois, Alaska, and Kansas.  We were fortunate to meet such nice people and we had a great time on the trips in the beautiful Arizona desert.

rock formations

Copper mine
We were on the mounntain overlooking this mine and there was a locked gate across the road so we had to turn around and go our the same way we came in.

These are the stones I cut and polished in lapidary. 
Four have been made into pendents in silversmithing and I have one to finish tomorrow.

After being here in Mesa for 2 months we leave on Thursday, March 8th to go down to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  We are meeting Bernie and Rea who we met on the Jeep trips and going to stay inside the park for 3 or 4 nights.  We are then going to Benson which is east of Tucson for a week.  Happy Travels, Barb