Our last full day at Organ Pipe National Monument (for this visit!)

We plan to leave Organ Pipe on Monday, so after attending church (the music from Harvest in Chicagoland area and the service from MacArthur in Irving, TX) in the motorhome via LiveStream, we headed out to do a few things we had wanted to do while here.

Last Thursday, we did the drive on Ajo Mountain Road, and I wrote that I was disappointed that the "crested" Organ Pipe cactus was no longer standing (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/01/organ-pipe-cactus-national-monument-on.html). When I mentioned that to the ranger at the visitor center, he gave me a brochure that had locations of more of the "Cristates" (the correct term) in the "Not So Junior Ranger" Desert Ranger Guide. 

"Cacti, like people are all different. No two are exactly alike. They sometimes have their oddities - some small and others more obvious. In humans physical oddities are often referred to as growth anomalies. In cacti, an interesting anomaly type is called a Cristate. That is because they often resemble the crests found in medieval times. Others are anomalies because of split arms or odd textures in the pleats."

The locations for the identified Cristates were all along the Ajo Mountain Drive... we didn't really want to make that 21 mile drive again, and, once you get started on the loop, most of it is one-way and you have to continue going forward the whole 21 miles. But, the first of the stops was before the one-way part started, so we decided to go see it.

This seemed to be an odder than normal anomaly (does that even make sense?) as the cactus resumed growing normally out of the top of the crest.

The others that I've seen have been the end growth of the branch.

The Cristate is in shadow in the midst of the whole cactus.

 

I remembered that there was a Saguaro with a Cristate along the main entrance road, so we drove back along it for a couple of miles until we saw it:

The sun was at a rather bad angle to get a good picture...

... but you can probably tell that it looks a bit different from its neighbors.

Then we decided to drive down to the border area -- the Puerto Blanco Drive is closed (on the west side of the main road through the park), but there was a road to the east to a "Line Camp" that we could drive on...

About two mile in, there were signs that we should not drive any further due to construction, so we parked... there was a Border Patrol Truck on the road next to the "wall" so Carl took a picture with it to give perspective.

We walked through the Line Camp area (no explanations about what it was used for, but there was some barbed wire fencing and corrals so I'm guessing it had been a ranching operation prior to the National Monument being established).

We walked on toward the border to get a better look at the "wall".

There were lights along the roadway, but they did not appear to be hooked up to electricity yet.

Looking down the wall toward the west, you can see light poles, maybe some cameras, and the border road (2 way concrete road surface). You also might be able to see a place a ways down where the wall is a little shorter -- there is a gate there.

Looking toward the east.

We were standing there looking at the wall from across the border road...

...when another Border Patrol truck came by. He stopped and talked with us -- Carl asked if it was okay for him to touch the fence, and the border patrol guy allowed as it was okay, but not to linger next to the fence.

So Carl crossed the border road and posed.

Previous picture zoomed in.

Another view

And that picture zoomed in.

You may be able to see that there were houses just on the other side -- there was smoke from a fire, maybe cooking something too.

As we were leaving the Line Camp area, Carl had me take his picture so he could contribute it to pictures that friends and family have been sharing of the snow in the Chicagoland area... just to rub it in that we are having 70s and sun!

As we were leaving the road to the Line Camp, I stopped to take a picture of this broad area near highway 85 (the main road through the National Monument and the road that crosses the border at Lukeville)...

There was a kind of roped off area with signs at both ends indicating "Media" - not sure whether it is in preparation for something coming up or left over from something that happened in the past.

We headed back to Gracie and sat outside enjoying the collection of "Vitamin D" in the sunshine, and then decided to take another hike from the campground area, on the trail toward Victoria Mine.

If we went far enough, this trail would connect with the Red Tanks Tinaja that we hiked on Saturday, but we weren't going that far...

We weren't even going to go far enough to make it to Victoria Mine... we only had about an hour or so before we needed to be back at the rig to make supper during generator hours.

It was a nice trail - not as easy as the former road surface that we were on for the Red Tanks Tinaja, but pretty smooth...

It went down into some pretty deep and wide washes. We hiked a bit over a mile in and decided to head back.

As we were heading back, we saw something cross the path in front of us; I was pretty sure it was a coyote, but we were surprised that it was not showing any concern about us.

This is the previous picture zoomed in and I added an arrow - you may be able to make out the back end and tail of a coyote.

As we watched, we saw that there were two... in this zoomed in version of another picture, the arrow shows most of the body of the coyote and it is looking at us. This one was a more reddish colored animal.

The wind was behind us, so we felt certain that they could have smelled us and when the lead animal looked right at us, it was obvious they knew we were there, but... I guess man is not a predator to them here and so they did not feel fear of us.

We have seen birds, and some chipmunk-like animals skittering across the road as we would be driving, but we really had not seen any animals on our hikes, so this was a nice gift!

On the way back, as we were getting close to returning to the campground, Carl noticed this odd growth on a Saguaro...

We think this was another Cristate! Isn't it pretty?

Finally, the view of the eastern mountains was so pretty - purple as the sun was getting lower in the sky in the west.

What a nice day!