The sunrise this morning was spectacular!
Today we took another scenic drive, the Puerto Bueno road. It is labeled as needing high clearance, but I think most passenger cars could do it. Certainly a basic SUV could manage it. I didn’t take as many pictures as yesterday of the plants, because I did so many yesterday, but I still got some nice shots to remind me of the area. Might as well get to it!
This is the first time I had see “The Wall” in person. It is just as ugly and intrusive as I had heard. I know we need to keep people from crossing illegally into the most inhospitable part of Arizona (they DIE!), but having a big area literally plowed clear in a National Monument seems wrong.
Note the person-sized gates on this section.
After we finished the road, we headed to the historic town of Ajo for some ice cream. The town originally was a company town founded to support a huge open pit copper mine, the New Cornelia, now closed. Some of the by-products of the original mine are still being sold for other purposes.
The town itself has a very pretty historic district including this lovely town square. Surprisingly the town still looks pretty prosperous in contrast with other mining towns after a closure.
We are packing up today to head to Quartzsite tomorrow. Going to camp in the desert with friends for a while. It will probably be difficult to post due to data issues with the hundreds of thousands of people who show up for the winter, but we will get to some other towns off and on.