Green Desert

 

Posing with the park's namesake cactus

We visited Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument way back in 1994 on our first whirlwind 2-week trip to Arizona.  I remember being enchanted with the desert and the cacti but I didn't remember it being quite so lush and green and dense with vegetation.

That's because it wasn't.  The Sonoran desert, unlike the Mojave, Chihuahua and Great Basin deserts has not one but two rainy seasons, the winter and the summer monsoons.  That's why it has all the cool stuff like saguaro which can't survive in the drier areas.  The Monument itself is the only place in the US that is warm enough to support the organ pipe cactus because they don't get much frost here.  There's lots of organ pipe cactus in Mexico.

And in the last years the climate here has become wetter.  They get massive rains now in the summer and more rain in the winter as well.  So it's much greener and all the cacti are bigger.