Organ Pipe National Monument (7th Dec)

Organ Pipe - funny name, right?

Yeah, we thought so too.

After we left Joshua Tree (or The Joshster as he is more often called in the shacks and shanties of old Nature-stoners) we hit a fat lot of highway - desert style. Twas a strange introduction. We flew through a wild mixture of AM and FM radio bands, picking up such diversity as the typical evangelists (we would hear a lot of these), Spanish radio (two stations at all times. Sometimes, all we could pick up was Spanish radio... so many trumpets), a bunch of country stations, a couple of decent rock-ish stations, a fucking awesome rock station (that unfortunately could only accommodate us for about 50 miles), some fat chauvinistic guy whose reason d'etre was to yell out at people who disagreed with him, and the 'Randi Rhodes Show' - who lightened up our day with her discussion on Meth Labs, and the (apparent) many exploding Meth Labs in New York City (I think the one in question was in a penthouse). Randi also offered us our favourite line of the day, regarding former US permanent representative to the UN, John Bolton, "I just want him to admit to the world that he is a horrible person."

* In an interesting sidenote, while trying to remember John Bolton's name a few weeks ago, I typed "US representative to UN" into Google. The responses weren't immediately helpful so I tried another approach: "US representative to UN republican asshole" and bingo bango - John Bolton's name started appearing like a rash.

We stopped in at a truck stop and ate some Chesters - a horrible Red Rooter meets KFC derivative, but instead of cooking the chicken in herbs and spices and oil, they must cook them in the liquified remains of dead and dying chickens. We kind of felt sick afterwards. Each eating booth was equipped with a payphone, and in one of the booths nearby there was a sickly-looking middle-aged couple, the woman of which was calling her mum having missed her sister's birthday because they couldn't afford the phonecall and they've moved to a new trailer park and things might be ok and they should have enough food stamps but she probably can't afford another phone call for a while.
Needless to say, Chesters was a depressing lunch spot.

Nearer the end of the day we passed through a truck stop that was more of a truck town, or perhaps even Truckton, although I was under the impression that Truckton was a Truck built from the remnants of an alien spacecraft that crashed in the desert and was brought to life by unexplainable solar activity cascading down from the Milky Way's creamy nougat centre - having said that, the story of Truckton that I know and just related came from the 80s so it is conceivable that Truckton grew weary with the world as an alien-craft-bastard-truck and used its gnarly and unquantifiable solar energy powers to transform itself once more, this time into a town. So we may or may not have come across the malcontent sentient being known as Truckton, it's difficult to say. Regardless, it/he was at the crossroads of two highways and consisted of four competing gas stations, a couple of motels, a couple of small take-out places attached to the gas stations, a formidable army of trucks (in the hundreds) parked or filling up, and a single cactus shop.
Twenty seconds and it was gone, faded away into the distance.

We finally arrived at Organ Pipe NM just after dusk, having to set up camp under the headlights of the car. In the morning we checked out the Rangers Station and danced a little jig before setting out on a small drive recommended by the Rangers.

The drive was shit-hot, both in the context of the heat and in that it was excellent. Of course, after icy, windy and crispy wintry nights, it was good to be back in shorts with the windows rolled down and working on a good sweat. The one-way loop was about an hour long, and unspoilt by modern man but for the winding dirt track, and another less winding, but still very much overgrown dirt path that is the old highway to Mexico.
















Ok, so there was also the occasional shelter and information post. Regardless, it was an hour well spent, though an experience that does not translate well into the telling. It was also a good chance for P to get behind the wheel and give B a bit of a much-appreciated break.


On our way out of the park we were stopped by Border Patrol (we were very close to Mexico - in fact the photo below is of the old 'highway' to Mexico). The car in front of us was getting the third degree from the Border Patrollians and Pedro in the back seat was getting really nervous. Finally when it was our turn, Patrolian #1 asked where we'd been.
B: Ahhh, the Organ ..Cactus... Park Place?
P1: Can you pop your trunk
Normally B could pop the trunk, but there seemed to be some kind of problem (the car was running) but after a couple of minutes of fussing and a feuding we finally got that bugger open. He took one look at our 'trunk' and sent us on our way, which is curious because our 'trunk' was absolutely chockas with boxes of food and wood and shit and our backseat was much the same. We had fun but Pedro and Miguel were a bit sweaty when we let them out. They thanked us and shot their pistollas into the air with as much stereotype as they could manage before running madly into the supposed freedom of the Unites States. Those guys were crazy.