2006/02 Southwest USA trip (NM-AZ) - Arch Canyon at Organ Pipe Cactus NM |
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Saturday February 11th
In the morning, we drove to the visitors centre to ask a few questions. One question was the difference between a national park
and a national monument. Mostly the parks have more facilities, but down here in Arizona, Saguaro National Park has few facilities while Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has a good campground. The ranger put us straight. Parks are created by Congress, while Monuments are created by presidents, in this case by Franklin Roosevelt. Both are run by the National Parks Service, so funds for both types come out of the same pot.
Our other question related to what areas we could get into, and it turned out that two of the most interesting roads, the Puerto Blanco Drive and the Camino de Dos Republicas were closed, because they run along the Mexican 
border, and the US government is building a fence along the border to keep the immigrants out.
We drove to the tiny town of Lukeville at the Mexican border to find the Post Office and mail our cards. Apart from the border post, there was just a row of stores called Gringo Pass. This included the Post Office, but it was 
closed on Saturdays, so we went back to the Ajo Mountain Road, which was one of those that we were still allowed to drive.
It’s only a twenty mile loop, gravel on the flat and blacktop for the hills, and it took us all day! It is a very scenic drive with all kinds of cactus and a backdrop of the volcanic Ajo mountains. Even the dead 
cacti add to the scenery. The woodpecker in the picture is perched on the skeleton of a saguaro. We often hear that the desert is brown and boring, but there we saw a riot of green cactus with a backdrop of red and yellow mountains.
Eventually, we came to Arch Canyon, named for the two natural arches up high on the canyon wall. We walked the trail up the canyon, and then somehow started the climb up to the arches. We kept thinking that
the trail would bring us to a magic opening and give us a view of the arches, but no, it kept going up the canyon wall. Eventually it turned into more of a climb, following cairns across the rocks, until we came out on the top of the cliff and ended up looking down on the two arches. It looked like the trail would end up inside the arch, but we were running out of daylight and contented ourselves with the view. Two young ladies came up the trail after us. We expected them to come bounding past on the way down, but they didn’t. Coming down is slower for me, more strain on the knees.
By the time we were down it was 5 pm and verging on sunset, so we just drove the rest of the road leisurely and enjoyed the colours as the sun went down and the mountains turned to magenta. On the way back, a motorcycle and four-wheeler came crashing out of the bush onto the road. We glared at them and then realized they wore uniforms and carried rifles. I guess the Border Patrol is everywhere (almost).