day92

Day 92 (November 20, 2006) - Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

That's it. From today on, we will be driving east, and the sunset will forever be to our back. We have reached the western most point of our trip and it's time to head back home. Although we are still 5000 miles away from home, as of today I'd better watch my back if I want to capture a sunset. We are also living California, but hopefully not for good. We liked it a lot, from the coast to the Sierra, from the parks to the desert. We will be back here for sure.

We are going to Tucson, Arizona, with a detour to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the border with Mexico. It's a vast area of Saguaro cacti, the symbol of Arizona.

Outside San Diego we drive through the Cleveland National Forest, a lunar landscape of huge rock piles that remind me of Joshua tree N.P. The freeway caresses Mexico all the way and around the Imperial Sand Dunes National Recreation Area we see the fence that separates the USA from Mexico. There are many RVs around here towing their ATVs to enjoy the dunes. There are also just as many border patrol cars around, keeping an eye on people sneaking through the border. We cross into Arizona over the Colorado river in Yuma, then detour down to the Saguaro. This road continues into Mexico, this is why after our visit in the park, on the way back up we need to cross a checkpoint. And here Petr gets almost deported. When we left in August we were still waiting for his green card to arrive in the mail, but it didn't so he has no papers attesting that he is a legal "resident alien" in the US. It's not our fault, it's a glitch in the US government machine, and I want to tell that to the officer. But I shut my mouth and he lets us go telling us that if he had thought there was a situation here, he would have had to take us to the office to run Petr's fingerprints for verification. He also reminds us that "having that card is a privilege, and he should carry it with him at all times". Oh well... off we go to Tucson. We drive through the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation and I realize that we could have avoided the detour into Organ Pipes, since the Saguaros are just as many and as tall here. We would have also avoided the sermon from the patrol officer...

We enter Tucson in the dark and we realize that we drove 531 miles today.