ROAD TRIP 2006, WESTWARD: SHORT-CHANGING ARIZONA

Day 15 (6/21) Thwarted

After some much-needed laundry, we began another long day of driving through the Chihuahuan Desert, down through El Paso, back into New Mexico, and finally into Arizona. The heat rose steadily all the way, holding at around 105 degrees. Around the Arizona border, inky clouds began to roil on the horizon. Outside of Willcox, lightning shot down all around us, and in town, the torrent began, nearly flooding the streets. The temperature dropped 40 degrees in 10 minutes, and we decided it might not be the best time to take the small desert road up to Chiricahua National Monument like we’d planned. So we got some food and found a hotel room. By the time those transactions were completed, the rain had cleared, of course, so I went for a walk around town. Looking south towards Mexico I saw the abyssal blues and blacks of the receding storm, but turning clockwise, the sky graded into warmer tones until combusting in the setting sun, making a brief appearance over the hills to the west in time to set north and east ablaze with the deep reds, oranges, and purples of Arizona. Glassy puddles dotted the concrete and pavement, reflecting this mad array of color all over town, and I cursed my recharging camera batteries.

When I got back, Dave had trapped a giant beetle under a bucket for me. Let no one ever say that Dave is unthoughtful. It was about 4 inches long, and had antennae about as long again. Very cool bug. I think now that it was probably a Palo Verde root borer (Derobrachus geminatus), or something closely related.

Day 16 (6/22) No Chupacabras in Chiricahua

Actually managed to wake the other two at a reasonable hour, went into Willcox’s cool little downtown off the business loop, grabbed coffee and a bite at this coffee shop / cyber cafe / gift store / ice cream parlor, where a steely eye’d ex-biker dude with an expansive gray mustache and a limp poured us coffee and told us yesterdays rains were nothing. “I seen it come right up to my porch”, he says. “That’s rain.”

Hit the country road to Chiricahua National Monument, through parched ranch land and some abandoned buildings, then up into the mountains, through pine and juniper forest and unbelievably cool wind-hewn rock formations. Weren’t long hiking before I noosed a lizard, a little mountain spiny lizard (Sceloporus jarrovii), the first of many. Trail wound through forest and rock, black-headed grosbeaks, multiple vireos and Empidonax that I didn’t bother to ID. Rocks were unreal. Massive pillars patched with lichen, huge arrays of them, like monuments to lost powers. Weird and impossible balancing rocks. Saw only two people on the trail after four hours of hiking.

Back at the visitors center, we learned of missed mountain lions, corral snakes, etc. I could easily have spent several days exploring the place.

Back to Willcox, mediocre BBQ lunch in an old train car, prickly pear ice cream back at the ex-biker’s place. Decide Willcox is a cool little town.

Back on the I-10, through Tucson and Phoenix, saguaros appear, spaced out upon the plain like trolls caught in the sun. Once again driving past miracles. End up in Blythe, CA, just past the border. Dinner at a little diner with great food (for a diner), camp at a county park by the Colorado River. After an hour of sleep, noisy teens, heat, and humidity push Andy and Dave past their limits, so we depart for a hotel in town.

Arizona deserved much more of our time. Maybe next summer.