Cacti and Battery Problems

I crossed another state line and checked in at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base FAMCAMP. Of course, this time of year all their full hook-up sites were full, so I stayed in overflow (dry

camping a/k/a boondocking). I figured it wouldn't be so bad since I'm in AZ with plenty of sun for my solar panels. Surely my batteries will stay charged and it'll be fine, right? Wrong! I think when my converter died in November and it drained my batteries, it damaged them. You can only discharge lead acid batteries 50% before damaging them and these were completely drained. Every morning and evening I have to run the generator to recharge the batteries. I'm looking into replacing them with lithium ones and upgrading my solar power as well. It'll be expensive but worth it to be able to boondock and not rely on the generator so much.

The good news is, since I was at a fairly level site, I tried resetting my automatic levelers again and this time it worked! I have my levelers back - hallelujah! I don't know why they worked this time but I'll take it!

The FAMCAMP was nice and using the bath house to take long hot showers was a definite plus! I only have a 6-gallon hot water heater, so showers in my rig are short.

My first wildlife sighting! This roadrunner was right across the street from my campsite. Yes, I did the "beep beep" at him. Come on, admit it. You did it too!

DMAFB is the home of the largest Airplane Boneyard in the world. As military planes become obsolete and need to be disposed of, or saved for future return to service, they are stored in the airplane boneyard. Unfortunately, due to COVID they no longer give tours. I was so disappointed. It was so cool to see rows and rows of different aircraft lined up like sentries.

Sunrise over the Aircraft Boneyard

I did get to check off another National Park though. Saguaro (pronounced Suh-wah-ro) National Park is divided into two parts. Saguaro West has more cacti while Saguaro East has more hiking trails. I came for the cacti so I spent the day at Saguaro West and it did not disappoint.

Panoramic view from Signal Hill trail

These petroglyphs at Signal Hill were pecked by the Hohokam people more than 1000 years ago. They may be solstice markers, clan symbols, decorative motifs or have religious or ceremonial significance; no one knows for sure.

Some of the cacti just made me chuckle. There were all shapes and sizes.

Saguaros everywhere! The sheer number of them was amazing to me.

Even the dead things add to the beauty of this landscape

The lower elevations had more grasses and "trees"

I wonder how this one got uprooted??

This little guy was about the size of a tennis ball. I just thought it was cute.

This is what a dead Saguaro looks like.

I wish I could put into perspective how tall some of these cactus were. This one was probably 12 feet tall. They grow very slowly, only about an inch a year. That means this one would be almost 150 years old!

I would love to come back and do some of the other trails and visit Saguaro South. If I didn't have reservations in California I would've stayed longer and explored more.

I left Tucson behind and headed to California. After all the dirt and dust from traveling the Southwest I couldn't take it anymore and ran the rig through a Blue Beacon truck wash. She looks good!