Thursday, March 2, 2017

Organ Pipe to Patagonia State Park AZ

We left Organ Pipe Park pretty early this morning, heading for Tucson and beyond. We had a nice drive, seeing a coyote along the way. We also saw a number of discarded black water bottles; apparently these are discarded by the unofficial migrants that come through the area overnight.

We did stop in at the Kitt Peak observatory before we got to Tucson. It's a pretty neat 12-mile drive from the highway to the top, going up about 4,000 ft elevation.





On the way up we passed a cyclist pedalling his way up. Did I mention that it’s 12 miles up with a 4,000 ft elevation rise??

On the way down we met several more cyclists churning their way up. They were very spread out, with the laggers not having much fun. It looked like they came in a tour van that was parked at the bottom of the hill. "Where's that electric-assist when I need it?"

We got stopped along the way at a Border Patrol Station, pretty common around here. The officer asked if we were American; when we said “Canadian”, he said “Close enough”, and waved us through. Every time we went through one of these checkpoints the officers were very polite to us, must be part of their training.

In Tucson we stopped at a Walmart for another data card for our Internet service. Also we had another browse of the Camping World store, where we bought our new step on the way west. 
I’ve never seen such disinterested and poorly-trained staff at a Camping World store before.

Before leaving the Tucson area we stopped at a Truck Stop to fill up our 10lb propane tank. $7.80 with the Good Sam 10% discount. We also had to try 2 slices of Meat Lover’s takeout pizza for $5, cheap and quite good.

We found #83 down from I10 quite a pretty drive. It reminded us of the hilly grasslands in and around Custer State Park in South Dakota.

We found a site at the Patagonia State Park for Thursday night. It's a nice park, but we didn't find the staff particularly friendly. I think they are freaking out, imagining the next few weeks as March break is rotated around the state schools. We could only get 1 night (which is all we wanted anyway) because the park is fully reserved for the rest of March. Lots of birders here.

View of Cormorants from our site:


Great-Tailed Grackles serenading:
We had never seen Grackles like this, and they were amazing singers.



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