2012/06 Western USA trip - Saguaro |
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We were late leaving the Petrified Forest, with no park within reach so we were looking for a forest service campground. First though we 
had to cross some desert and the Fort Apache reservation to get to the Tonto forest. There were few towns and even those were marred by closed and derelict businesses, some vandalized or burned. The scenery changed to pine forested hills and then we reached the Salt River Canyon, a spectacular spot, but also marred, by decayed viewpoints and a closed rest area. We entered the Tonto forest, and after some searching we found the Timber campground, with just a couple of other campers in place. The payment options were sufficiently confusing that we waited for a fee collector to come around. A ranger zoomed around early next morning but didn’t stop.
Sunday June 17th
We drove into Globe the next morning to fill up, and found a gas station that required a charge on the credit card before enabling the pump, promising a refund if necessary, but then the clerk enabled the wrong pump and we had to do it all again and then the card company smelled a rat and froze the account and we had to do it all over again with another card……one hour wasted!
After all that I took a wrong turn and our GPS gave us a new route across another Apache reservation, this time on a deteriorating dirt road, and we eventually 
turned around before we got stuck. We saw our first roadrunner of the trip but no one was fast enough with the camera.
The roads towards Tucson were quite good, but mostly narrow, so although we were passing beautiful yuccas and saguaros and agaves there were very few spots where we could stop and look. The agave to the right is also known as the century plant; it actually lives for thirty years (not a century) as a squat yucca-like plant and then throws up this gigantic stalk, flowers, and then dies. The yucca to the left has lived long enough to grow a main trunk.
I’d hoped to get to a shaded park to the north of Tucson where we’d camped back in 2006, but I had the wrong road. It turned out that the Catalina Highway doesn’t go to Catalina. Instead we came into a brand new subdivision of Catalina and took the opportunity to do our shopping. I was pleased to find that Walmarts in Arizona are allowed to sell booze. It was right across the aisle from where they were selling guns, handy if you need some Dutch courage for a shooting.. I wanted a plastic bottle of rum, and found a 1.75L bottle for $12. (That would be about $55 in BC.)
The plan at that point was to get to the other side of Tucson for lunch and then head for the Tombstone area. I probably misprogrammed the GPS and it led us into the depths of downtown Tucson and announced that we’d arrived. Luckily it was a Sunday and we were able to get out easily. Then I saw a sign for Saguaro national park and thought we’d eat there and then take a closer look at all those plants we’d been passing by. The only snag with this brilliant plan was that the temperature was in the mid 40sC (110F).
We ate lunch in the picnic area and then did the park circuit through the desert. The heat doesn’t bother me much but I was worried about
the rest of the group. However, they were all so interested in the cacti and flowers and birds that we were there for nearly three hours.
The major feature of the park is of course the saguaro cactus, the giants most often seen in Western movies and cartoons, even though in reality they only grow in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. They grow to about seventy feet and don’t grow any arms until they are 75 years old. We’d arrived at the right season for the flowers but not the right time; they bloom at night and shrivel by noon. They are a popular perch for birds, including this white-winged dove and the cardinal.
The park is a riot of spiny plants, all kinds of cactus, barrel, cholla, prickly pears, and ankle stabbers as well as saguaros, ocotillos (like a whip with thorns), and palo verde, a pretty green-stemmed tree with gigantic thorns. We blundered around trying to evade the spines and being rewarded occasionally by flowers and glimpses of birds and lizards.
The place was closing up as we left. There’s camping close by at the Colossal Cave, but I thought we’d be cooler in the mountains around Tombstone than in Tucson’s valley