Episode 5 of our series South to Spring is now live. We cover, you guessed it, our time in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona. This may have just been our best stop of the trip, and we initially didn't even plan to go there! There were spectacular sunsets, amazingly green and lush vegetation, loads of birds and flowers, and some pretty great hiking. We hope you enjoy. https://youtu.be/FFkVC4okRbo
Our second full day at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was going to be a bit of a day off. We weren’t driving anywhere, we’d catch up on a few things and then hike from camp for the day. We were around the campground during part of the day and observed that a lot of people in the massive RV’s seem to plan their day around maximizing their generator use during the allowed hours. I’m not sure how they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on those gigantic things and they don’t even come with solar panels to keep them charged. But, we did hear sounds of vacuuming, so maybe their power needs are just too much for a solar panel to keep up with. We headed out on our hike to Victoria Mine.
As forecasted, the wind blew through the night. Typically in our Four Wheel Camper wind doesn’t bother us, but this was another level of wind. The roof was flexing and popping and the sides of the camper were billowing in and out. It was going to be another windy day in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. We packed up camp and drove to a place where we could find internet coverage so we could study the extent of the predicted high winds. It appeared that the wind was going to last at least the next two to three days and cover all of southern California, even reaching over to Nevada and northern Arizona and beyond. But it did appear the far southern reaches of Arizona were out of the wind path. And there it was, a little spot saved on our Google map as “want to go” right on the border of Mexico. Organ Pipe National Monument was a five hour drive, but the weather looked gorgeous, no wind and temps in the 70’s. Not bad for the first of March. Not seeing another option if we wanted to escape the predicted 80 mile per hour gusts, we gave in, pointed the truck east and made the five hour drive.
