CRUISIN’ DOWN RT 85 TO LUKEVILLE

      Today was laundry day, which means we have to peel our butts out of bed sooner than normal to beat the rush.  There are quite a few rigs traveling together that are leaving tomorrow, which means today is also their laundry day. I caught one sunrise picture this morning..I was actually fully dressed when I took this, believe it or not!!

    On the way to laundry detail, I met Ray cleaning the balloons and streamers off of his truck from the “parade” yesterday. I thanked him for a wonderful Mardi Gras party and the feast his wife had prepared…If you read yesterday’s blog, then you know we had a blast..and…. no liquor was involved!

   At the Mardi Gras, we met a gentleman who is staying here at the park..he knows us as the Cave Dwellers because he follows our blog…and he has a blog of his own..He told Den that he and his son climbed one of the mountains here,  known as Flat Top.  He must have more skills than we do, because we would have to climb it with the ambulance following behind…Here is a link to his blog, where he tells of the experience of climbing it…Bellingham To Mexico.  His photos from the top are awesome!!!

    After our walk we decided to drive the 28 miles to the “town” (and I use the term loosely) of Lukeville.  With coffee to go and camera in hand we hopped in the truck..(all of you people are magically fitting into our truck with no problem, but no fighting, please).   Halfway down Rt. 85 I noticed what looked like a duck blind on the top of one of the hills close to the road..Knowing there were no ducks here, I was puzzled…and Dennis missed it, so he had no idea what I was babbling about…We ran into some road construction, with one lane closed, but it gave me an opportunity to get a few pictures while we were sitting still.

 

 

   We noticed it was much greener down here, closer to the border.. The desert was almost like an oasis of green in spots…

          

The Ajo Mountains are really rugged looking in the distance, as we got closer to Lukeville.  You drive through Organ Pipe National Monument on the way, and we stopped at the headquarters on the way back.  A lot of the scenic drives are closed due to more frequent illegal activities in the desert down here..The Ajo loop road is still open, but we had already done that when we were here 6 years ago. Here is the road just outside of Lukeville…

We discovered that Lukeville is just barely a wide spot in the road…They have a motel and RV Park…a border crossing…a gas station and grocery store….

 

…..and I managed to sneek a picture of the Border Patrol Canine, who was busy sniffing out drugs….

I hesitate to point my camera at any Border Patrol….I got yelled at once in Roma, TX for taking a photo while we were crossing back into the US….They were NOT happy about having any photos taken..and probably could have confiscated my camera…I get in trouble with my camera frequently, but I won’t go into that now. In truth, the town of Lukeville is actually Gringo Pass…at least that what the US Post Office said on the front, with the zip code underneath..Why the heck it is called Lukeville is a mystery to me..After sneaking a couple pictures through our truck window, we headed back up Rt 85….having seen what there was to see of Lukeville, AZ.. Here is the sign as we headed out of “town”…

As you can see, the day was absolutely beautiful…and look how green the desert floor is down here…

We stopped at a wayside to take a photo of the mountains all around us…

   When we stopped at the Organ Pipe National Monument, I had to stop at the gift shop, of course.  I found a copy of the Man In The Maze, with the explanation of it on the back..This is a huge part of the Tohono O’odham belief…

I am truly amazed at the insight this simple story has into all of our lives…

Dennis saw the “duck blind” this time as we were driving back, and he also saw mounted cameras around it..He thinks it is put up by Border Patrol with remote cameras to watch traffic..In fact, there was a Border Patrol car right across from it , just off the road….I looked like a camo tent with netting draped around it….sneaky little BP’ers!! We got back to our camper about 11:30, I fixed a sandwich and we ate outside…rough life…

I need to mention that for the last few days, the skies overhead have been eerily absent of the roar from military jets…Well, today they were definitely back!! There was almost a constant roar from their powerful jet engines…I happened to look up over the mountains behind us and saw this great contrail of a jet…looks like he was doing loops and having a ball..

Well, it is almost time to clean up..We sat out in the sunshine this afternoon, and let me tell you, that ‘ol sun is getting pretty warm.  Tomorrow is grocery day…and we are having the last two of our tamales for lunch…I need to buy another half dozen when the young man comes around again to our camper selling them…

We are thinking of going into the Barry Goldwater Range Saturday morning…I will get some more pictures…If you are getting tired of desert photos, I really have no control…it’s where we ARE!!!…but thanks for playing…and more fun tomorrow…(stay in the truck..and , no, we aren’t there yet….)