Tucson, Arizona

We looked at the "welcome to Gila Falls" book the motel keeper had put together, and lo! there are petroglyphs nearby! We decided to go see those first thing. This is just as well, because I stupidly left my book in the motel room, and since we had to come back through town after the 'glyphs, we could fetch it. I did discover that the cell phone doesn't work out in the middle of nowhere, which of course negates the reason for having the cell phone.

There are many many petroglyphs, and it's fascinating. They wrote over each other, either marking territory or more likely conserving rock space. Either they were taggers or hunters, hard to tell. It was really interesting.

As long as we had to go back to town for my book, we also stopped at the history museum to answer some questions for a virtual cache. It's just the type of museum we like, just a town's attic with a few signs, but no over-riding theme and not all cleaned up and turned into an interpretive center. They've messed up Reno's by modernizing it, and Sparks' as well.

Then I got my book back, blush, and we headed south toward Why and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Along the way, we kept seeing Border Patrol folks. Meanwhile, on the radio, Rush was comparing Kerry's campaign to Chappaquiddick. It's drowning, and he's doing nothing while the passenger, the Democrats, are in big trouble. Heh.

At the National Monument Visitor's Center, Rich bought his Golden Age pass. As a reward for getting old, he paid $10 and now we can go to any National Park free for the rest of his life. That quite made his day! The visitor's center is named after Ranger Kris Eggle who lost his life on a drug bust. Another martyr to the War on Some Drugs.

We took the little nature trail at the Visitor's Center, then took the 8-mile loop trail. Organpipe cactus only grow in the Sonoran Desert in certain areas. They're beautiful. There were a gazillion saguaros. We learned that they usually grow in the shade of another plant, a "nurse plant." They're each individual. If I "adopted a saguaro" I would want it to be a specific one that I could come look at now and again. We saw one that looks like it's preaching, a number of aliens, one that looks like Beaker from the Muppets, and on and on. The flowers at the top give them "Bart hair" at the moment.

We then drove over to the campground and walked the 1.2 mile desert view trail. We saw lots of cactus (go figure) and a couple of ground squirrels, a roadrunner, white winged dove, 2 lizards, a jackrabbit, and cactus wrens. Also, apparently I got too close to a "jumping cactus", a cholla, and had a pad on my shorts which I noticed after I'd walked a way. Rich helped get it off and we worked the spines out of my shorts for the rest of the walk.

I bought a toy javelina (which we haven't seen any of) and The Three Little Javelinas for Alex, and a howling coyote and a funny coyote book for Genevieve.

We were there about 4 hours in all. Then back in the car, we passed through a border checkout. These guys are my heros, but when he asked what was in the back of the car, I pictured unpacking the lot and it was a minor panic. We apparently convinced him it was just "clothes and stuff" and that we were citizens, and on we went. (Wouldn't we be better served if they could spend all their time looking for illegals and not for drugs?)

We drove over to Tucson through the Tohono O'Odham Reservation, and kept seeing more Border Patrol people. They have movable watchtowers. One of the roads at the National Monument is closed while they build a car-proof fence along the border. We could see the border now and again as we drove along. Then, we saw someone being arrested, and it was so interesting Rich drifted into the left lane while a car was oncoming. "eeeeeee!" I very articulately said, but it got him back to our lane. Whew.

We wandered around some surface streets in Tucson (because otherwise it was on and off and change freeways within a mile, too complicated) and came to this very nice Comfort Inn. It's big, it's got free local phone calls and a swimming pool (though it's too cool to use that tonight) and it looks like we'll enjoy the next three nights here.

Then, of course, we looked for caches, and found a couple. One is "Tucson's Highest Tree," a eucalyptus. Another was a tiny aspirin container in a downtown wall. We also wandered around a little boutique complex looking for one, but had no luck on that.

In the news: Diesel fouls Suisun Marsh. ARGH!

High point, Organ Pipe Cactus

Lowspot, jumping cactus. It could have been death, so it's not so bad.