We are headed east, back toward Virginia. On our way, we are visiting some national parks and monuments that were closed by COVID-19 in the spring, but have now re-opened. This blog post is the first of two about those explorations.
First, we need to catch you up... After visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, we spent a few days relaxing and resting up at Arizona's Lake Lyman State Park. As the name implies, it's located around a lake, although that lake was much smaller this time of year than it would be right after the winter snow melt.
Although we mostly rested, we did hike around a lake peninsula to see some 1,000-year-old petroglyphs.
Lyman Lake sits at about 6,000 feet elevation (thus, not too hot) in eastern Arizona. This is good, since the main air conditioning unit in the Ciaowagen broke while we at the Salt Lake. Since we stayed at elevation for the next couple of weeks, the nights were cool and the day temperatures didn't get above the mid 80s. Fortunately, we have our portable AC unit, purchased from Amazon earlier this year, to stave off hot days we expected in our southern Arizona travels. We had to do a rather creative external venting installation since it was not designed with RV installation in mind. But it works (at least well enough to keep things sort-of-cool when the outside temperature is close to 100)! Which was exactly what the temperatures were as we headed toward the southern border of the U.S.
As noted above, our reason for returning to the hot southern desert was to visit some sites that had been closed by COVID-19 when we were in this area of the country in the spring. First on our list of re-opened parks: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Ajo, Arizona. It sits in the western part of the state near the border. The park protects stands of organ pipe cactus, a unique species that exists mostly south of the border. The national monument represents the northern extent of their range.
Mature organ pipe cacti stand 15 feet tall or more, and you can see from the shape how they got their name. In the monument they're interspersed with other Sonoran desert cactus species like saguaro and prickly pear.
The national monument is fairly large, but was empty on the day we visited. The best way to explore it is a 20+ mile scenic drive that has some paved sections but is mostly dirt and gravel. It winds through canyons and past natural arches, and there are some great views of mountains in Mexico to the south.
The Ajo campground we stayed in was officially closed (although they agreed to let us stay for a couple of nights), but had a number of campsites occupied long-term by people we were told were working on "The Wall." There was also a Border Patrol monitoring site just down the road from us. In true government fashion, one guy was stopping and interviewing travelers and 6 other guys were standing around on the side talking amongst themselves.
We then headed east and spent a few days in Tucson at Desert Trails RV Park, the campground where we'd hunkered down for six weeks in the spring. This gave us a chance to meet our laundry, pharmacy and grocery shopping needs, as well as hike some of the desert trails we'd enjoyed. Unlike the spring, very few cacti were in bloom (only some barrel cacti). And it was very hot so we needed to head out in the early morning or just before sunset for our hikes.
Right next to our rig was a Palo Verde tree. These trees do not sport leaves for much of the year - only blooming when there is sufficient moisture. However, the trees' green trunk and branches are filled with chlorophyl to keep the tree fed and healthy the rest of the year.
People at the campground told us that the normal monsoon rains of June and July had not materialized, and we did see some plants that were dead or dying.
While in the Tucson area, we were able to visit another place that had been closed in the spring: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It was a hot day during our visit, and most of the animals were either snoozing or hanging out in air-conditioned comfort - smarter than us, obviously. However, we did walk through their magnificent cactus garden and saw some varieties that were new to us.
We also visited the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, the largest private air museum in the country. They have both indoor hangers and a large outdoor storage yard, and a mix of civilian and military aircraft. Aircraft range among one of the smallest plans ever to fly, the NASA "Guppy" carrier, a Boing 787 Dreamliner, and a retired Blue Angel jet. One old Air Force tanker looked for all the world like it had a dog's face. The museum also had an old Air Force One (propeller driven) from the Kennedy/Johnson era - perhaps this was the plane that flew JFK's body back to DC?
We left Tucson on a Sunday morning and drove east to Alamogordo, New Mexico, the gateway town for White Sands National Park. White Sands had been a National Monument since its founding in 1933, but was promoted to full National Park status right before Christmas 2019. The park contains over 275 square miles of pure white dunes made from gypsum (the same stuff that's used in plaster of paris and sheetrock). The gypsum is very finely grained and, unlike sand, does not retain heat.
Layers of gypsum formed in the rocks hundreds of millions of years ago when the southwest U.S. was a shallow sea, then was uplifted into mountains. Each year, gypsum from the mountains dissolves into rain and snow melt, washes down into a lake on the west of the park, crystalizes as the lake dries, and then gets blown into the park to settle on the existing dunes. Those dunes stay in place because the ground aquifer is only a few feet below the surface - much different than your typical desert location.
We did three hikes during our day in the park. Generally, you have to follow markers stuck in the dunes so you don't get lost. One of the hikes was wheelchair-accessible. The dunes are mostly hard-packed, making walking easier, but in some heavily trafficked areas it was a real struggle to get to the top of the dune. Vegetation tends to grow in low parts of the dunes, although we did see some plants like yuccas sticking up among otherwise white surroundings.
Dune sledding is a popular activity - we saw a number of families who had brought their own with them to try out (see video below).
In the park, even the road is white, as is the picnic area.
The dunes shift with the wind. We saw an aspen tree that, at one time, had its roots underground but were then exposed when the dune moved.
We'd visited White Sands National Monument with our kids around 1998 - it was great to see it again.
We continued our leisurely trek east to see some more national parks that had been closed in the spring. More about that in our next blog post!
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