“Roughing it” at Organ Pipe National Monument

This place gets our 4 Star, Best-in-Show, Blue-Ribbon-Winner Two-Thumbs-UP Campground.

There are two campgrounds at Organ Pipe National Monument.  One is close to the Visitor’s Center, and has water, showers, etc.  We stayed there last year, and it was great.  They had sections for RVs with generators and ones without!  And, if one’s RV was small, as we were, we were allowed to camp in the tent section which was ever farther away from the generators.

But we read something about a primitive campground in one of the brochures, so that’s what we went for on this visit. 

The “primitive” campground here is better than any of the campgrounds in most places.  It is to positive what the campgrounds in the Gila National Forest are to negative. 

Here goes:  Only four sites.  Only tents, vans, or truck campers!  NO GENERATORS!!!!!  At any time.  Pit toilets.  Trash boxes.  COMPLETE RECYCLING!  Sites not sitting on top of each other.  Seven-day limit within each 30 day period, resulting in nobody just parking themselves here because they have nowhere else to go.  No lights from any towns.  Breathtaking views. 

Quiet. 

We are going to stay here for several days.  In fact, for our seven day limit. 

For our first day we took the only official hiking trail that leaves from the campground.  It is two miles, round trip, to an old ‘ranch” that is up the canyon.
  

This ranch was established in the early part of the 20^th Century, and efforts were made to make it profitable for several years—but the climate was not right.  Water, of course, was always an issue. 

 

After we got to the “ranch” we kept on going up the wash, making our own trail, until we were doing more scrambling than hiking and until we started running into boulders the size of UPS trucks.  

Then we came back, and hiked a mile out into the desert.  It was fun making our own trails for a change.

From our camping site we can see a saddle off to the south.  Tomorrow we are going to try to make it to the top of it.  We’ll be making our own trail.  Should be interesting.