Unusually wet weather seemed to be limiting our local options for pleasant camping so we decided to gamble on heading towards the Sonora Desert for a full weekend. Our previous trip to the Salt River garnered a new appreciation for saguaro forests and I thought we could string together a nice trip stopping by the Quartzite rock shows and heading on to Saguaro National Park near Tucson. We drove out towards Quartzite late Friday evening to arrive shortly before midnight. My Prius scraped its way down the rutted dirt road to a slight pullout where we set up our rooftop camp in a cool 30 seconds.
In the morning we ambled into Quartzite to check out a couple of the shows, Desert Gardens and Tyson Wells. It was weird: Quartzite was bustling like 25 years prior in my youth and a lot of the ways the same. But the venders and people seemed to be quite different. Notably there were considerably less mineral dealers and more bead/jewelery/carving types. I saw some neat things but did not finding anything worth committing to a purchase other than a breakfast burrito.
We drove on to Tucson, arriving to the Saguaro National Park West visitor center just as they closed but with time to grab a map and to take a quick loop around before searching for a camp spot. Saguaro NP is rather atypical in that it is composed of two blocks of land with the city of Tucson in between. Both sides had driving loops and a few trail options. We ended up camping on a roadside BLM block on the western outskirts of Tucson, nothing glamorous but perfectly well suited to our simple needs.
In the grey morning we drove the Bajada Loop to the Hugh Norris trailhead where we got out for a short one mile hike through the saguaros up to the first saddle. We hurried back down with the ominous view of dark water walls creeping across the distant desert towards us.
We stopped again for a short walk to Signal Hill, which had a neat collection of pictographs including a very prominent spiral I liked. Right as we reached the pictographs it began to pour on us so we grabbed a few pictures and retreated back to the car. We finished the Bajada Loop drive and worked our way across Tucson to check out the east side of the park.
Other than the distant views of Mt Lemmon and the moody weather, we both found the east part of the park to be even more underwhelming. The saguaros did not seem to be nearly as dense or enormous here as other places. We quickly drove through to wrap up our Saguaro National Park experience.
With a little more daylight we opted to drive towards Redington Pass a little to the north, spotting a great example of a crested saguaro right off the side of the road.
We found the lower trailhead for Tanque Verde Falls and lightly packed for a short hike in the rain. The trail rapidly descended down through nice saguaros and other cacti to Tanque Verde Creek where we were both delighted to see a healthily flowing creek with neat bedrock exposures. It took considerable care to work my way up the slippery rocks past several smaller waterfalls to reach the main falls. The hike was spectacular and far exceeded any of the scenery in the nearby national park. I convinced Heather to try a direct way up out of the canyon instead of returning the long and slippery way we came. We meandered through cacti and carefully chose our way scrambling up through two cliff bands. As we climbed the views of the waterfalls became even better. Soon we gained the road for an easy stroll back to the car. This hike really redeemed the day.
We had a very tasty southwest style dinner at Seis Kitchen hovering beneath a heat lamp just out the edge of the rainy courtyard as we planned our next move. Tucson was now forecast to receive considerably more rain than previously forecast. Looking at our options we decided to drive west through most of the evening's rain to camp roadside just outside of Organ Pipe National Monument. We slept cozily to the light patter of rain.
In the morning we drove south to within 6 miles of the Mexican border to briefly stop at the Organ Pipe Visitor Center to orient ourselves. We opted to take the 21mi Ajo Mountain Drive loop through the east side of the monument. We were thoroughly impressed with this national monument. Not only did it have spectacular examples of the namesake upward clustering organ pipe cacti but it also had bigger and more numerous saguaros than Saguaro NP, cementing my view of Saguaro's NP status being more linked to politics and visitation than merit. We tried to follow some of the roadside landmarks in the "no-so-junior ranger" guide but had about 50% success based on the abysmal directions ("A small cholla cactus sits just to the left of a dead palo verde on the right side of the road. By standing and looking across the cholla and just to the left of two large saguaro cacti you will see..."). The scenery was fantastic and there was a lot to see as the views evolved over the drive. The desert here was remarkably green and lush.
Near the apex of the loop we stopped to park at Arch Canyon and decided to go for a moody hike up the canyon carved through red-brown ignimbrite. The trail got considerably looser and slipperier as it turned away from the canyon bottom to climb up toward the arch. To save time I continued on up along through the intricately winding path. I made it up to the arch but it was actually fairly awkward to photograph up close with better views from the trailhead. Nevertheless it was a neat, somewhat wild hike.
We continued around to close our loop drive and then unceremoniously headed for home. We saw a lot in our couple day escape, got good use of the rooftop tent, and managed to avoid most of the regional rain. All in all a good cool weekend in the desert.
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