My….Those are Awefully Big Cacti!
My husband and I car-camped at Organ Pipe National Monument in southern Arizona over the holidays. It was a beautiful place! We stopped there on our drive from California to Texas(see below post).
I am a big fan of car-camping. You get the benefits of camping with some comforts of home. We bring a cooler loaded up with fun foods. I don’t know what it is….but, sleeping outdoors gives you an appetite and a poignant appreciation for food. In some miniscule way, camping puts you in touch with your hunter/gatherer ancestry…food feels like a scarce and valuable resource.
So, Organ Pipe is nearest to Ajo, Arizona. It is full of giant Organ Pipe cactus and red rock canyons. We were the only occupants of a large canyon campsite about three miles down a dirt road. The earth was finely ground red gravel and scrub brush, the canyon walls rose up sharply into the sky and we were surrounded by an army of cacti. They were everywhere…huge and almost evenly spaced apart. Each one had a unique shape and we had fun trying to describe what individual ones looked like. They were also handy surfaces for storing our libations!
We watched an incredible sunset, cooked our dinner, and made a fire.Then read our books in the tent. There was a small creek nearby and so we had the lulling sound of water to aid our slumber. The night would have been perfect if I didn’t have to sleep with a husband and a dog in my tent that snore in unison!
Tags: cactus, camping southwest, Travel
