Ajo Dispersed Camping

Camp spot in southern Arizona found on iOverlander, the travelers’ app (above). 

You get 14 days at a Bureau of Land Management campsite. It’s all free and pretty much unsupervised but every two weeks you have to move at least 25 miles. It’s a fantastic program but I don’t think I could sit still for a whole fortnight. 

Three days worked well for us. Rusty needs a little time to get comfortable in a new place so by day three he was happy wandering the bushes with me. But then we had to move, we had places to go and things to do. Besides, Laynes mouth was healing nicely and I was rested and ready to explore. 

The weather was okay, cool enough to be comfortable with unfortunately overcast skies and gray flat light. It was t-shirt weather but with no insects. We slept well in the silence. 

To get here you drive through the tiny village of Ajo, a collection of picturesque but tumbledown buildings alongside the highway. Suddenly the mapping requires a right turn through town on a paved road. 

Which turns into a dirt road and in this case recently graded which made it an easy drive. 

I’ve long wanted to check out this distant corner of southern Arizona so plans are to drive the Organ Pipe National Monument and the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation on our way to Tucson.  

Rusty and I wandered the desert, an area that reminds me of the Keys in that the variations in terrain are subtle and I went looking with my camera. 

We had a few specks of rain and some cold winds pushing thick black clouds overhead. 

Layne had her birthday here and she reserved the right to celebrate when we get to Mexico later this week. 

The days passed easily with a slow start in the morning, a walk with Rusty and a late breakfast followed by some housework and reorganizing of the lockers. We are always looking to get rid of stuff. 

Layne reminded me it was a long holiday weekend and we had a few cars and Jeeps and motorcycles and quads and bicycles and hikers come by. It’s a popular area but they just passed by and left us to our own devices. 

There is a group of travelers that like to go deep into the back country. I’m not one of them as I prefer asphalt but still I’m always ready to take to the dirt as long as it’s manageable with GANNET2’s low clearance and fundamentally road going Agilis tires by Continental. They are great tires, quiet on pavement but they aren’t knobby off road tires. 

We were possibly five minutes from the end of pavement and parked just off the dirt road but it was genuine wilderness. For us there was no need  to go further or dig deeper into the back country. 

We had a few distant neighbors including one poor soul who droned a generator at odd hours. I could hear the vroom-vroom when I was outside our home. Not everyone has a huge battery bank. You can see the RV below with a Mini parked alongside. 

I have added some photos gleaned from my walks with my Panasonic G95 and zoom lens. It was a good spot listed on iOverlander just south of Ajo on Alley Road. Easy to find. 

I hope you had a good weekend. We did, some home cooking, lots of reading and photography. Layne kept in touch with friends by phone as we had a decent signal here. 

Enjoy the desert!