Creosote, teddy bear cholla, ocotillo, and saguaros in foreground with rust-brown colored mountain in background in late afternoon light

New story published, Organ Pipe Cactus trip, blog recap, recap, and New Years memes (Weekend Coffee Share #20)

January 8, 2022 /

Happy New Year, friends! I hope everyone had wonderful winter holidays. And a big thanks to Natalie the Explorer intrepid hostess of the Weekend Coffee Share! Thanks, Natalie, for helping me connect to so many awesome bloggers like yourself.

Writing News–my latest short story is published!

My big writing news: My Christmas horror story, “Woe is Me, Poor Child, for Thee,” has been published in the annual Deathlehem holiday horror anthology. See the linked post for deets. SQUEE!

Winter Break blog posts

In case you missed ’em (What? You had better things to do over the holidays than read my blog? I’m not angry, just terribly, terribly hurt.), here’s what’s new on this blog since the last Weekend Coffee Share:

Winter Break Travel

We originally planned to drive to Vegas for a few days during winter break, but then omicron happened, and we decided spending 3 days in crowded casinos and restaurants would be, shall we say, stupid. So we took a short desert road trip instead, the highlight of which was a visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The park is a couple of hours from Tucson on the US-Mexico border. It’s the only part of the US where the organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) grows naturally, though according to the information at the visitor center, the plant is common in Mexico. Fun fact: a few of these amazing plants grow in people’s gardens here in Tucson, including mine (here are some pictures of my organ pipe cactus blooming last spring). It’s supposed to be too cold for them here, but fortunately plants don’t read botany texts.

Just outside the park, we entered the booming metropolis of…

Green town sign that reads, "Why," above a blue and white sign with symbols for gas, food, and camping with desert landscape in background

A town named Why?

Why????

We never did figure out why Why is named Why, so we moved on to the park. We began our visit at–where else–the Visitor Center, where we were greeted by the skeleton of a dead organ pipe cactus.

Skeleton of an organ pipe cactus, smooth branches partially covered by something that looks like corn cobs

There’s a short, brick-paved trail at the Visitor Center that provides a lovely introduction to the park and its vegetation.

Brick trail through desert landscape including saguaro and organ pipe cactus and ocotillo against a deep blue sky

The thing between the saguaros that looks like it has tentacles is an organ pipe cactus. Apparently someone less demented than I am thought the arms looked like organ pipes rather than tentacles. Go figure.

As usual, I decided to have some fun with the noir setting on my iPhone:

High contrast monochrome of tall saguaro with 3 short arms next to ocotillo, surrounded by other desert vegetation against white clouds and grey sky
Saguaro ready for a boxing match
High contrast black and white image of sides of organ pipe and saguaro cactuses showing their ridges. Organ pipe spines are long and black silhouetted against the sky.
Cactus noir

A spiny selfie to memorialize my bad hair day:

Head of a woman with long flyaway hair wearing University of Arizona face mask surrounded by tall cactus arms

Further down the trail, just outside the back door of the Visitor Center, are two ponds containing Quitobaquito pupfish, an endangered species that lives only in the park and in nearby Sonora, Mexico in a range covering around 4 square miles. The ponds were built by students at a nearby middle school some years ago and are still maintained by students at the school as a class project.

Pond with water plants surrounded by stacked grey stones

When we finished at the Visitor Center, we took the park’s most popular scenic drive, the Ajo Mountain Drive.

Saguaro and organ pipe cactus growing up the side of rugged mountains
Dirt and gravel road leading into rugged desert mountains with a rock arch near the top

As you’d expect when visiting a place called Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, we saw lots of organ pipe cactus. They grow up the sides of the Ajo Mountains.

Desert landscape with many organ pipe cactuses and a few saguaros surrounded by creosote and other desert vegetation
Organ pipe cactus on hillside

In a rare example of perfect travel timing, we reached the end of the drive at sunset.

Ocotillo, organ pipe cactus, and teddy bear cactus in foreground with desert hill in background just before sunset
Edge of gravel road in left foreground alongside hill covered with creosote and cacti
Creosote, teddy bear cholla, ocotillo, and saguaros in foreground with rust-brown colored mountain in background in late afternoon light

After we finished the day at Organ Pipe National Monument, we spent the night in a dump of a motel in Ajo, AZ, then continued north to Gila Bend. I’ll share pics from that part of the trip in next week’s Weekend Coffee Share.

And now it’s time for what you’ve all been waiting for… the funnies!

New Years Memes

How about y’all? Did you do anything fun over the holidays? Any exciting plans for 2022? Happy New Year!

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19 Comments

  • Gary A Wilson

    January 8, 2022 at 1:16 pm

    Hi Janet. I’m that guy who is still trying to get my brain around the fact that in Arizona, you can do jail time for injuring a Saguaro, so your post title had me at “Organ Pipe Cactus”.
    Had I ever seen them? Could they be cooler than the saguaro?

    I think I had seen them from the road driving down to your neighborhood to visit my daughter during her time at the UA. I’ll give you ‘cool’ but the saguaro, with it’s ability to animate itself within the constraints of a photograph still win the day with two arms that do all kinds of fun stuff.

    Congrats on being published. Is it just me or did they not really keep you waiting long on this success?

    Hope you have a great 2022 queued up.

    • Janet Alcorn

      January 8, 2022 at 3:46 pm

      Saguaros are cooler b/c they’re anthropomorphic and whimsical, but organ pipes are cool too.

      Thanks for the congrats. I submitted in October, so they didn’t keep me waiting too long.

  • Natalie

    January 8, 2022 at 6:43 pm

    Thank you Janet for your weekend coffee share. I love being called ‘intrepid’ and ‘awesome’ 🙂 I’m glad you’re enjoying the Weekend Coffee Share blogging connections. Congrats on your short story writing success! I’d love to visit the Organ Pipe NM one day. Beautiful photos and how timely to see the sunset there. Have a wonderful week!

  • rawsonjl

    January 9, 2022 at 6:32 am

    I am loving those sunset photos! What a neat park to explore. Living in New England we don’t ever see cacti like that.

    • Janet Alcorn

      January 9, 2022 at 8:35 am

      It really is lovely, but then so is New England. We visited there in 2016, spending most of our time at Acadia National Park in Maine. It was incredible.

    • Janet Alcorn

      January 10, 2022 at 6:08 am

      Glad you got some laughs! That meme reminded me of the last time I had surgery. No food after midnight, so let’s see how much I can stuff in my face at 11:59 pm 🙂

    • Janet Alcorn

      January 14, 2022 at 11:46 am

      Thanks! And yeah, that town name is hilarious and sort of accurate. As best I could tell, the whole town consisted of a gas station and mini-mart. Definitely made me think, Why?

    • Janet Alcorn

      January 14, 2022 at 11:47 am

      They really are. I’ve only lived in the Sonoran Desert for a little over a year, but I’ve become fascinated with cactus of all sorts. They’re so weird and cool.

  • Rowena

    January 17, 2022 at 4:20 am

    Janet, you have some truly awesome photos here. I thought I’d pop back to your post from last week before catching up on part 2. Congratulations on getting your short story published. That’s awesome.
    I’ve never been to America. However, I’ve driven from Sydney to Perth and caught the train across the Nullarbor Desert a few times as well. We don’t have anything quite like the cactus out there, but we do have kangaroos, and sadly they end up as road kill and you see eagles perched on top – easy pickings. It’s like fast food in the outback.
    By the way, your sunset shots with the silhouettes of the cacti were stunning. Sunset shots really go up a few notches when there’s a unique local feature that give it a local flavour.
    Best wishes,
    Rowena

    • adminuser

      January 17, 2022 at 10:17 am

      Thanks so much for your kind words! I’ve never been to Australia, but it’s on my bucket list. I don’t like picturing kangaroos as road kill–they’re so adorable. But then we have lots of deer as road kill, and they’re adorable too.

      • Rowena

        January 28, 2022 at 9:44 pm

        Sorry for my slow reply. It’s Summer holidays here and we’ve all gone a bit troppo, although it’s rained heavily this Summer and Covid has put an even greater dampener on things.
        I hope you get to Australia some time. It is such a unique place and so beautiful. Clearly, I’m a proud Australian!