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After a couple days at the Buenos Aries National Wildlife Refuge we moved a bit north for a day at the Saguaro National Park. We found all shapes and sizes of saguaros, and with each one having a bit of its own character, it was hard to stop taking pictures of them.

Here it was two days before the winter solstice, and temperatures were hitting the upper 80’s. A bit too hot for my taste any time of year, but December?

Following our day at Saguaro National Park we spent our next night in the Ironwood National Monument. We read that in a lot of areas the ironwood trees have mostly been used up for fuelwood. We found a few nice specimens on the monument.

We continued to move west. Our next stop was a couple of days on the Sonoran Desert National Monument. We arrived in time to enjoy another nice Arizona sunset.

The next day we hiked into the Tabletop Wilderness from camp. Recent rains had some of the plants putting on a flowery show, a nice December surprise.

We were treated to yet another stunning sunset.

We had looked up the Alamo Canyon Campground at Organ Pipe National Monument for a possible vacancy a few days back, and lucky us, there was a site with two days open. With only four sites, it can be a bit of a challenge to get a site here, so we happily grabbed it. We’d spend Christmas Eve at Alamo Canyon Campground.

We had some of our only rain of the trip for our two days at Alamo Canyon. The grey skies and wind kept things subdued.

We spent Christmas at the larger Twin Peaks Campground in the monument. The blue skies returned.

Yet another stunning Arizona sunset closed out Christmas day.

We decked out the truck with homemade snowflakes and holiday lights for the occasion.

And we whipped up our own version of Christmas (red and green sauce) enchiladas in the Omnia oven.

Not a bad way to spend Christmas.