San Luis Reservoir to Ajo, Az

 

Our longest day of driving yet.  We turned east at Bakersfield and climbed up into the Tehachapi Pass, a really beautiful area of pines and live oaks. 

On the other side we descended to the Mojave desert - windmills and Joshua trees. 

At Barstow the road suddenly got packed; we'd joined up with the highway from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a Friday afternoon.  Another few hours of driving and we crossed the Colorado River. We were in Arizona. 

In the past we'd stayed in the overflow parking lot at Lake Havasu State Park, but when we arrived at dusk, on a Friday night, even the overflow was full.  So we drove out of town and ventured up a gravel road in the gathering darkness unsure of what we'd find.  What we found was a ton of rv's parked all over the place and we found a level spot to overnight in a little to close to the road.

In the morning we woke up to this:

We headed into town to attend to business: stocking up on groceries, filling up with water, repairing a tire, and then we were off to Organ Pipe National monument right on the Mexican border.  First we had to pass through Quartzite, boondocking capital of Arizona.  There's not much to recommend it, in my opinion, except for the free camping.  The desert here is pretty flat, dry and barren. 

They did have rain though, the brittle brush was blooming along the roadside.  We stopped at a rest stop where the hillsides were yellow with tiny flowers.

We'd already learned that the campsite at Organ Pipe was full for the weekend.  We had a free camping area nearby already picked out and found a site before the sun set.  Again too close to the road but we will be leaving in the morning.  

Compare this lush desert scene to Quartzite above:

We went for a walk as the sun was setting.

Bird of the Day:  A phainopepla was calling in the palo verde trees, and we saw an unidentified hummingbird, but this site was surprisingly devoid of birds.