Superbowl Sunday!!
Yes, an important day for football fans, but since the game doesn't start until 4:30 PM we had time to explore another area of the park. After our typical leisure morning, we drove out of the campsite and back towards the visitor center. Just before the visitor center we turned left on a road that takes you past a few park administrative buildings, then on to the Puerto Blanco Drive. This is the longest dirt road - about 40 miles - that you can travel in the park, but unfortunately after the first couple of miles the road gets quite rough and is only recommended for high clearance vehicles. As we mentioned on a previous day, we didn't want to risk damage to our Mazda SUV so we skipped the notion of taking the full route along this road.
The scenery along this road is of course very similar to the Ajo Mountain Drive that we took the other day. When you reach the warning sign about the rough road ahead (which is also one-way) there is also a small picnic area with washrooms. The area is at the bottom of a small mountain, so it is quite picturesque - and hot. Fortunately the picnic tables are under covered shelters to keep you out of the sun.
While driving along the road we noticed a tall flexible flag pole (perhaps fiberglass) with a blue flag at the top. We saw one of these on our previous drive the other day and didn't really pay much attention. However, this time the flag was close enough to the road that we could see 2 small blue barrels sitting on a wood frame on the ground. Our guess is that these are emergency water stations for anyone who might run into trouble in the area.
Once we completed the short drive and were back at the visitor center, we decided to continue down Highway 85 and go the the town of Lukeville which is on the Mexican border. It is only 5 miles from the entrance to the visitor center to Lukeville so it was a short drive. When we got close to town we passed a sign that said the border was 1 mile ahead. Soon we rounded a slight bend in the road and could see what looked like an inspection station. At that point we hadn't really encountered a town, but didn't want to go any further and reach a point with no turn around. We hadn't brought our passports with us and didn't want to get into something that might cause us a lot of problems.
After turning around on the road and heading north a ways we encountered a sign for Puerto Blanco Drive - the south end of the road we were on earlier in the park. So we took the opportunity to drive west on this road that parallels the US-Mexico border. We only travelled about a mile but we encountered a section of border fence that we assume is part of the Trump border wall. We pulled off the road and were taking pictures of the wall, when a border patrol truck came up the trail. The driver slowed as he passed us, waved, and carried on up the road to the west. We're not sure if he came to see what we were doing, but we then realized that our actions were a little suspect. We stopped in the middle of the highway just before the inspection station, turned around, then headed west on this gravel road and stopped at a spot about 100 yards from the border fence. If there was any concern we are sure he noticed our Alberta license plate and wrote us off as tourists.
We are not certain whether the section of fence was actually part of Trump's border wall, but it was interesting to see. It looked big enough that it must be difficult to get over, through or under but someone must be doing that because of all the border guards we have seen in the area.
Dave was lucky that our Cricket Wireless Hotspot worked almost perfectly for the Superbowl game. There were only a couple of glitches where he lost the streaming signal, but no significant issues. We are really pleased with the Cricket service and would recommend it.
