Nature at its best, this is one of the most amazing places, no there are no flashing neon lights, no big crowds, but this is one one of the places that we all should visit at least once. It is the only location in America that the Organ Pipe cactus grow wild, it covers 517 square miles, is just south of Why Arizona and runs to the Mexican border, it is bordered on the east by the Tohono Oʼodham Indian Reservation and on the west by Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

It is an area that has seen more than a few border jumpers, and they can only hope that the border patrol finds them, as many parish in this piece of the desert where summer temperatures exceed 120 or 44 degrees, while hiking in areas we have seen the barrels of water scattered throughout the area, as a life line to survival on the trek from the border as it is very unforgiving. We have hiked many of the trails and find most to have loose terrain creating difficult footing, and everything here wants to stab or bite you, the cactus alone are just plain mean, and in the summer, snakes, scorpions, and then there is the whole Gila monster a venomous lizard, you get the idea. We visit in the winter and most creatures are hibernating, we have not seen any of these creatures and really don’t think we are missing anything…just saying

One of the meanest cactus have to be the jumping chola, ok it don’t really jump but their tips are so weakly attached that any contact they just break off and stick to anyone or thing that is close. They are a nice looking cactus they almost look bright and inviting, and don’t be fooled by a name as the teddy bear chola has a brown fuzzy appearance but appearances can be deceiving and in this case very deceiving because that fuzzy is all spines. Ouch!

And of course there are thousands of Organ Pipe Cactus, saguaro cactus, prickly pear cactus, and the list goes on. As you drive the loops there are points of interest, that are numbered and correspond to the guide, there will be a number of visits for us during or stay, every time is a learning experience, and did I mention the beauty of the landscape as well.

Well it’s only fourteen days till Christmas, but some of my presents landed today, yes my big purchase from cyber Monday, was delivered by FedEx, yes this has been almost a two year wait, after realizing our coach batteries were on the way out in January 2018. We have nursed them along till now, watching their voltage fall off much too fast, and the solar system bringing them back to 100% just to have them near total failure every night. Yes this is long overdue and although this install is most likely temporary it should bring us online to a much better boondocking experience.

This is a major investment, and a decision that I have not made lightly, it’s after many hours of research, and many conversations, that we decided to pull the trigger, and the fact that we were able to score a significant saving by purchasing these batteries on cyber Monday, just allowed us to purchase a couple of extras (hence the temporary install). I purchased blemished batteries, they still have the same performance, still have the ten (10) year warranty, but with a $250 dollar saving per battery! Talk about a Scottish Christmas, because they are for a solar system there is no sales tax (score), the shipping was included (score), and we will shed weight even adding more batteries. In fact just three of these lithium batteries would have given us as much usable amp/hours as the four AGM lead acid coach batteries, and I still have trouble getting my head around that one.

These Battleborn batteries are blemished, what that consisted of was couple of the cases weren’t as neatly sealed as some of the others, I checked every battery as it came out of the box, voltages were all even and I really had to look to see the “blemishes”. There batteries retail at $1049 each, because I was one of the first callers on Cyber Monday, I got the special pricing of $799 for these blemished batteries. I have emailed Battleborn twice so far and in both cases I got a return email within minutes, as I had to reprogram the charging rates into our BlueSky solar controllers, because now it’s all about taking care of our investment and getting the most out of our system. I just got a notice that our new inverter should be here tomorrow, hopefully I will have the first four battery’s installed by then, I only managed to get two installed today, as I have had to make up new cables for every connection.