Our route:
Before we begin the long route to southwestern California to the Anza Borrego Desert State Park with our boys' before our flight home at 21.4. have to spend a few days, we do in one of the most beautiful and because of its geology and biology's most interesting areas of the southwest a little walk. We drive to the Chiricahua National Monument, we have of our trip in 2006 lasting impression. On a small campground, the middle of a forest of juniper and oak trees, only 22 offers smaller RV's place, we spend two nights absolutely quiet. Mexican Jays, White-tailed deer and even a Mexican Coatimundi (Nasua narica), a voracious omnivores are other visitors of the place.
leaves on well-developed hiking trails in the woods and past the massive towers, columns and needles from rhyolite tuff walk well. 27 million years ago exploded about 16 km distant volcano. Huge quantities of ash and sand were blown into the air and deposited here in a 600 m high layer and compacted into a solid tuff layers. About 15 million Years was lifted in this layer up and broke in vertical columns. The erosion by sun, rain, ice and wind brought from the mountains and rarely as masters out the characteristic towers.
Now we drive back through vast levels: by the Chihuahuan Desert, which extends far to the north to Texas and Mexico, and which also includes the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona and California in the Sonoran Desert . We go on about the same route, which the settlers in the 19th Century by the lower reaches of the Mississippi had taken out: in Arizona, especially the flow of the Gila River, which flows into the Colorado River in Yuma along. Southern New Mexico and Arizona was looking to mid-19th Century for ways to connect the isolated California to the East. Wagon Roads with stations every 20 miles have been set up, planned rail lines. Settlers followed the route masse. This led to the known conflicts with the indigenous population, the Indians, but also with the Mexicans. The resource-poor neighbor to the south could eventually be bought a large area to secure the western route breiträumig - and the opening up of the South was no limit to everything.
on I-8: Interrupted
the individual level through the mountains, stand out like islands from the plane. These so-called Sky Islands you can imagine lonely like green islands in the South Pacific, full of exotic plants and animals. Plants and animals are stuck in these islands. Changes in the climate change and thus the living conditions, there would be no escape for this, and evolution would extinguish it. Together with the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico, they are one of the three mega-centers of biodiversity on our planet. In the Chiricahua Mountains, which is a part of this center, home to more than 1,200 plants, including 233 tree species and 70 mammal species. Half of all bird species occurring in North America, namely, 275 types are found here, plus visitors from Mexico as the elegant trogon (Kupfertrogon) and the Mexican jay (Graubrusthäher).
This 1000 km long journey we stay again in the Saguaro National Park, the vegetation has changed wonderfully in the past few weeks: Now bear covered with green leaves, spiny Ocotillos (candle bush) red, the Hedgehog Cactus (hedgehog cactus) purple, the Prickly Pear Cactus yellow flowers, the Creosote with dark green leaves and numerous small yellow flowers.
We enjoy an afternoon at our covered patio listening to the Cactus Wren (Cactus Wren) and read fascinating stories of settlers and Indians in the 19th Century. Tags sure it is in-bred ride on the little traffic I-8 to Yuma, where we arrive shortly after noon. We visited an old prison. Esther but I can not be locked up. It is now only a museum, where between 1876 to 1909 3069 prisoners, including 39 women were imprisoned. It is situated on the banks of the Colorado River, a river in a pitiful compared to what it was at the Grand Canyon.
thunder on a railway bridge over long freight trains, which I of course for our granddaughter Emily, a railway and aircraft fan, film must! Today we continue to El Centro to the west shore of Salton Sea, one in 70 m below sea level nearby lake. In 1905 the waters of the Colorado River broke through the levees of an irrigation canal, flowed freely for two years in the basin of an alkaline dry lake in ancient times and was like this (again) the Salton Sea. There would we do again, hope to see many birds and then reach on Thursday, the Anza Borrego Desert State Park
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