El Camino Del Diablo

The stagnant, tea-colored water at Las Tinajas Altas was nothing you would want to drink.

Bumping over a low rocky pass, we found what we were looking for 4.3 miles from Tule Wells. Just as we stopped, a Border Patrol agent flashed his lights behind us. Apparently, the little side road we had explored earlier was a known drug running route. The officer had seen the unusual tracks of our Michelin XZLs, and was sure we were smugglers. We all had a good laugh. The next morning, after a long walk up a dry wash and through fields of wildflowers stretching into the nearby hills, we didn't get started until after 11:00 a.m. This camp was so peaceful, we wish we could have stayed a week.

Twenty-one miles from Tule Wells we entered a section of sand, deep mud ruts, and bull dust. Clearly, the braided tracks would not be passable after a heavy rain. For several miles, the trail wound through the desert like a sidewinder in search of a dinner. Perhaps part of the original historic trail, it seemed to be made by someone on foot or horseback, following the best path through the cholla and ocotillo. In other areas, the road was so eroded, vertical sidewalls were over three feet high. It was like driving down a bobsled run through soft sand-the kind of road you wanted to turn around and drive again, but it was so narrow, it would have been difficult to do so. We crept over a rocky five miles across the Pinacate Lava Flow and back into more bull dust. Mesquite trees raked the sides of the truck.

In a 12-hour period, not a single vehicle passed our camp near the tip of Vopoki Ridge.

Passing the gravesite of Dave O'Neills, a prospector who died from exposure and dehydration, we came to the huge Border Patrol station, not shown on any maps. A little further on, the Papago Well and tank made a good lunch stop, and there was water, despite repeated warnings that "There is no water anywhere on the route." The sand was deeper now. We could hear the pitch of the engine change in the soft spots. Apparently, it gets even worse in the heat of the summer. One section was "paved" with interlocking steel aircraft landing mats.

As we passed into the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the desert was progressively greener. Bates Well was our last stop. Abandoned now, the Border Patrol has a 6x6 flatbed parked at the entrance for a refueling station. From here, it was an easy 15 miles to the blacktop of Highway 85. Ajo to the north held little of interest, and Lukeville to the south even less. We opted for the convenience of the scenic Twin Peaks Campground inside the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Snowbirds were already packing up and heading north with the geese.

Strange rock formations, resembling melting wax in the setting sun, prompted us to find a camp near the tip of Vopoki Ridge.

Strange rock formations, resembling melting wax in the setting sun, prompted us to find a

El Camino Del Diablo is a beautiful route. By luck, the flowers were spectacular. Maybe ten Border Patrol trucks and a handful of private vehicles passed us in two and a half days. No animals. No illegal immigrants. No drug smugglers. No unexploded ordnance. Just the awesome silence of this unique desert-and that alone is enough to bring us back.