03-18-10

You know, every time you plan on something it seldom works out the way you expect it to.
Yesterdays trip was supposed to be a cactus flower photographing expedition. We planned to go to a part of Kofa where we found a lot of flowering cactus last year.
Well every year is different.:o)

We left the park at 9:00. There were five rigs in the party; Becky, Dennis, Suzanne and Roy in there two Rhino's. Carrol and Richard in there Polaris RZR, and Debby and Mike in there Yellow sand buggy and of course Patti and I in Clifford.

We crossed the bridge and turned into Tyson wash, then followed the wash to old Yuma road and followed that until we crossed under the power lines. A short distance past them we turned east on a trail that after a mile or so crosses AZ 95 and enters the Kofa at Chrystal hill or the Pipeline rd. Traveling east on the pipe line road we stopped for a short break at the Kiosk so every one could get a map and I could point out the rout. We stopped at the Motor Generator on the pipe line. The motor runs off natural gas and according to Roy who worked in the oil fields around the world, the generator is used to apply a voltage to the pipe to retard corrosion.
We turned south at intersection (2) High Tanks road and stopped for a short break at Scott well, one of the wildlife watering systems in the refuge.


So far we haven't seen any Cactus flowers.
We continued south toward De LA Osa well. Finally we saw some flowers. A couple of Ocotillos in bloom.

Then a little further down the trail we found a few butter cups.

That's about all the flowers we saw in the Kofa.
We stopped for lunch just past a shear walled canyon

from there we headed back to the north.
As we drove along we came to a side canyon that I had noticed last year but at that time I couldn't walk. This time I can walk some so I stopped at a wide spot and some of us walked into the canyon,



working our way around and through thickets of brush and over rocks.
The canyon continued to narrow

We climbed until we came to a large rockfall that we could not get over without ropes.

The canyon was cool and very pretty but still we found no flowers.

After we got back to the rigs we headed north until we came to intersection 25 where we turned northwest traveling through a valley that last year had fields of wild flowers carpeting the area. This time there was a lot of green but no flowers. When we got back to the MST&T road we had a conference and decided that we would not visit the towers and just head for home so we turned west and drove to where a trail connects this road with the Pipeline road and headed north then west across AZ-95 and back to Old Yuma rd. On the way we found some pretty orange flowers.


OK! Well, that was our "photographic expedition". The next time I want to go looking for Cactus flowers I wont mention it to any one before hand. Maybe we will have better luck.

Here is the Map;