Thursday Oct 20, 2022 - Bisbee AZ (Home) to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

 

Our first outing together in the van. We tag teamed it with two cars coming back from CO, but this is the first time we are together, the old team back. We have done truck camping and car trips around the country and in Canada (eating shrimp under a tarp in the rain in 1988 with my newly pregnant wife in the Canadian Maritimes, memories!!) and it is great to split the driving.  It’s also great to have the one who’s not driving either navigating or looking up the history of the town we are about to drive through. It’s fun finding all of the goofy roadside attractions like “World’s Biggest Ball of String” or James Kirk’s childhood home from some time in the future. It’s much more fun with two.

We loaded up the same stuff we normally take which is pretty minimal and our plan was to hit a couple of stores on the way to get a few things we forgot we needed last trip (step stool to get into the van with my cranky old knees, a few groceries, silverware tray, stuff like that. We hopped in and headed toward the Divide and discovered that the passenger seatbelt warning system blinks lights and dings the warning bell no matter what. Do we want to drive 4 hours with that @#$^* ding ding ding going on? I assumed, incorrectly, that it had to do with the swivel seats that Dave & Matt installed and tried calling them for ideas, but their phone system was messed up and they could get phone messages but could not get voice calls in or out. But they quickly e-mailed and texted, and the bottom line was they did not have anyone available to troubleshoot until tomorrow. Then I thought maybe Tim at our local Bisbee Bug may have some insight, but there were already 3 people waiting for him to open with real problems. So I called my old buddy Skip who has been a mechanic all his life and he  gave me a few things to try. After fiddling with it we determined that ir was a faulty seatbelt buckle switch which is a RAM Promaster problem. I called the RAM dealer in Tucson thinking I could “stop by” and see if they could fix it, but nobody available until next week. Crap. So I summoned my inner farmer and determined that I could make it not beep if I stuck my pocketknife blade down in the seatbelt buckle slot and push it sideways and hold my tongue just the right way. So I drove and Deb held the pocket knife in there (and held her tongue just the right way), and we headed up RT 80. She upped the game when she determined that if she cut her CVS mini-store plastic card in half and stuck it in the slot, it required less babysitting (and no tongue holding).

We stopped in Benson for coffee and then stopped at Harbor Freight and Walmart in Tucson for the other things we needed. Then Deb found an amazing bakery and we got a couple of donuts for the road trip (actually never made it out of the parking lot).

So on to Rt 86 all the way down to Why, AZ where it merges with RT 85 and then into the park. Nice young ranger there who was filling in today (and couldn’t ring up our National Park refrigerator magnet) and he verified where our site was. I think he was ready to go back out and do field/wildlife stuff and not the inside stuff. Nice kid.

So at 3:30pm we found our site and at that time we only counted a couple more campers. By dusk, another 8-10 had rolled in.

This park is very remote and right on the Mexican border so there is a history of drug smugglers. In 2002 a young park ranger was shot in a skirmish with drug smugglers and they named the visitor center after him. In 2007 they made multiple improvements in security and have not had major issues since then. 

We walked around the park as the sun went down and then back to the rig to make dinner and play cards. Deb is determined to learn to play Gin Rummy.