Finding monumented monuments in the monument - monumental!
We had another day filled with wilderness hiking and BMs! The day began with breakfast, waffles this time with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, oranges and strawberries, and sausage. It was a full house again, but there were two new couples, plus the two sisters (siblings, not nuns) who were here yesterday. The new couples were just passing through on their motorcycles. Fascinating group! One couple was from Alberta, the other from Wisconsin, and they both spend the winter in Yuma. They were doing a tour of the area before heading home back north in a few weeks. We had a great discussion about survey mark hunting and hiking in the park, healthcare and technology, and northern weather (summary: it basically sucks except sometimes in the summer). The nurse was selling Montana where she lived at one point, and thinks we would have a great time exploring there (we do too)! We spent a long time at breakfast and had to pull ourselves away at 9:15 to make our way to the park.
Reminder - ask Mike if we can take the cactus pad that fell off outside!
Along the way into the park there were two BMs we wanted to look for. The first was at MM68, and it was the one I had noticed the witness post for a few days ago. Turns out there was no convenient pulloff except one on th eother side of the road. We did stop there, although it was a bit too small for my liking, but as I was getting ready to get out a park ranger went by slowly either as if he thought we needed help or didn’t like that we were parked on the wrong side of the road. We felt uncomfortable and moved on without recovering the mark.
The next one was a bit tricky too, but we found a decently sized pulloff on the correct side of the road, only problem was that we had to walk down the road shoulder for a short distance before we could hop up onto a level, relatively clear surface. (Keep in mind the traffic is moving at 70+mph, yikes.) I was walking toward the coordinates when R said “here it is!” But it actually wasn’t - what he had found was a Department of Agriculture disk only about 50 feet away from the dis we had been seeking, which turned out to be right alongside the road. So we got a two-fer this time, and as a bonus will get to correct the handheld coordinates submitted by a geocacher (he had obviously made a typo and was off by a full minute of longitude).
We headed for the visitors center next, to look for the CORS station and a few other marks in that area. We found the CORS station easily (coordinates don’t get any better than that, literally!) after a short but slight scratchy walk through the brush. So much vegetation here this year! There are at least half a dozen other instruments near the CORS station, we assume weather stations and things like that.
The next mark on our list had coordinates nearby, but we didn’t find anything at the site and the description didn’t seem to make sense. It referred to the national monument headquarters,which if that’s the same building that now houses the visitors center, it was nowhere nearby. The mark was supposedly 174 feet SE from the SE corner, and we were much farther away than that. So we decided to make our way out, go back to the visitors center and see if they knew anything about the history of the building. They did, surprisingly. They said it was a historic building and that it was the same building in use as HQ in the 1950s, just that the auditorium had been added on at a later time. So we poked around in the area near the center, now a nature trail, but still couldn’t find anything. We checked several areas that would have been 174 feet SE of the SE corner, basing that estimate on different corners in case we were unintentionally including an added-on area, and checking with the distance from the highway. Still nothing, so this one remains a mystery for now.
Our next plan was to head into the Ajo Mtn Drive and look for two bMs along the way to the southern end of the old county road (not really the southern end, but the southern end of the part that;s now used as a trail). The first was a very easy find on a prominent rock outcrop. I was hoping the white painted letters “BM” from the 1950s would still be evident, but not too surprised that they weren’t. The second mark was a little more of a challenge. A creosote bush has grown up and around he monument making it hard to spot and even more challenging to take photos!
We had to laugh when we got to the parking spot for the old county road and looked at the mountain on which ORGAN PIPE is set - no way we could possibly do that today, and even if we want to do it in the future we’ll have to set aside a full day and do a lot of preparation. But we still had two more marks we wanted to look for along te country road. They were easy ad fun, and it was a long but beautiful walk. We found a large lizard on the road, who turned out o be dead (no wonder he was so calmly posing for photos). The mountains provided a beautiful backdrop to the saguaro forests here. We didn’t see too many organ pipes in this particular spot although there were some.
We were unsure if we wanted to do the full Ajo Mtn Drive loop, but we decided to go for it, and it was a good choice. We’ve done it before but it’s always gorgeous and inspiring, and SO MANY organ pipes! I have no idea how people can say there aren’t many organ pipes here. They literally blanket the hillsides. The one-way drive winds up and around, very narrow in spots, through saguaro and organ pipe forests, with a backdrop of rocky rainbow hills and mountains. There’s even an arch that you can hike to as well as several other trails that begin along this loop. Always a good choice!
Back at the intersection with the main highway, we had one more BM to look for, but we had no luck, We discovered that it was a rod without a sleeve, set flush, and the description didn’t lead us to anything useful. Very likely this one is below grade now, or possibly even gone due to road widening.
We stopped at he visitors center once more to pull a cholla spine from R’s ankle, adn then headed back to town. We tried the very new restaurant Arriba, which was open tonight after being closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was very good! Some of the best restaurant iced tea I’ve ever had, and excellent chicken flautas for me and green chile burrito for R. The salsa was great too, slightly sweet and hot, very unusual. We ate it all and all of the chips. Stuffed, we headed back to the room for some extra rest!