White Tank Mountains Regional Park

1/25/09
Last seen fleeing Western Arizona...

I headed east toward Phoenix without a plan, just figuring that a city that big would have on its outskirts a Toyota dealer and a park-like campground where parents might take small children camping. At an outlying visitors bureau I learned that I’d figured right on both counts, and after a couple of hours of auto row I was setting up camp at White Tank Mountains Regional Park, not just conveniently located but also really, really lovely. I arrived in late afternoon to a low winter sun backlighting as nice a desert floor as I’d yet seen, a vast glowing field of green! This was my first encounter with the Sonoran Desert. Such a dramatic one-day turnaround gave my spirits a sorely needed boost, particularly since it arose from my spontaneous and decisive change of plans, not something I'm particularly famous for..

Giant Saguaro dominated the eyeline. These big-armed cactus are found only in the Sonoran, and at 30-40 feet tall are one huge vegetable. Joining them are the Palo Verde, an overgrown bush with small green leaves, green trunk and green branches. Nearly everything was green. Even the creosote was green. But most surprising of all, the ground was covered with grass - lush green grass. This made me suspicious but the campground host assured me the park did not water or irrigate; it had rained a few weeks back he said, and the native grass holds its green.

Giant Saguaro

Palo-verde

My favorite, though, was the Teddybear Cholla, the cutest little cactus you'll ever see. Three to four feet high, thick with loads of short arms so bristled with silver spikes it takes on the look of soft plush. Backlit it glows a spectacular golden-silver. But its innocent looks are belied by its aggressive defense mechanism, which has earned it the nickname "jumping cholla" for the fact that its needles are so primed to launch that you don't even have to touch them. Walk too close too fast, and they'll get you. Far from cuddly, they have the most notorious spikes in the desert, with barbs that dig in deep with a reverse spin. You must walk mindfully in the Sonoran desert.

Teddy-Bear Cholla

Teddy-Bear Cholla up-close

The park was quiet, there were birds and bugs and showers, and they closed the entrance gate for the night at 8:00PM.  Yee ha. The night was very dark, with little blinking transmission lights on a nearby mountain, the eerie glow of the megalopolis, and Venus. A giant Saguaro outlined against the dark glow - a very strange things to see against the sky when you crawl out of your tent at night.

I was so happy I decided to stay another night and spent the next day on a good rigorous hike straight out of the campground up into the surrounding hills, past the eponymous white tanks, with a climactic view a rather anti-climactic overview of one sadly polluted "Valley of the Sun". Didn't we have a Clean Air Act?

White Tank

The next morning, a young family in the campsite across from me went for a walk on the trails. Mom, two young daughters, one toddler son, and two dogs set out, leaving Dad behind to drink his coffee. They weren’t gone five 5 minutes when first a dog's yelp and then a toddler's wail and soon a young girl running back to the campground yelling "Daddy Daddy we need you. Boy and Dog (she had names for them) have stickers in them" put an end to Dad's rest and relaxation.