Ajo (ah-ho, not A-hole)

The past couple of weeks Cindy and I have enjoyed visiting some of the area attractions. We headed down to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The park sits in the lower part of Arizona south of Gila Bend and borders the Mexico border. Needless to say we stayed on this side of the border and chose not to visit Lukeville, Az., a border town. There are some towns on the border that one crosses and there are others where it’s just plain smart to stay away from, and Lukeville is one to stay away from.

We left the park and some hiking and headed to a town called Ajo( pronounced Ah-ho, not A-hole as some of us do.) The town was home to a very large copper mine, the mine itself is actually 1.5 miles across and employed over 1000 workers until shutting down in 1985. Ajo is a small town with a few restaurants, shopping and some mission buildings.

Ater leaving Ajo we headed back to Gila Bend and enjoyed just lying around in the 70’s degree temperatures. After closely watching the weather map I now know why people head to the southwest part of Arizona. While everyone ( including Florida was freezing ) we were enjoying the temps in the mid 70’s in the day and mid 40’s at night ( makes great sleeping weather).

Wednesday, Jan. 13th, we had an opportunity to go to the bombing range just south of us. Now I have not talked very much about the bombing range( in fear of worrying some of you at home) around here but I will try and fill you in on what it is. There is between 1 and 2 million acres of desert here that is owned by the govt. and used for every kind of training from all of the branches of the military. It is not uncommon for us to be sitting outside or in the camper and hear them dropping live bombs. Sometimes they drop the BIG ONES (someone said around 500-1000lbs) and you actually feel the after shock of it. We have also had the opportunity to hear the A-10 Wart Hogs use live ammo ( 30 mm) , it shoots 3900 rounds per minute, 50 rounds the first second and 60-70 rounds per second after that, so what we hear at the rv park is the sound from this huge gun being used. The sound we hear is nothing more than a loud zipppp to us. The day we went to the bombing range they had the F-16’s dropping dummy bombs and firing live ammo. It was quit the experience to be able to stand on the tower and watch them fly by where you could actually see the pilot and watch them shoot at the targets ( see pictures). The only disappointment was that the A-10’s were not out that day but we did get to see quit a show put on by the F-16’s. including some rocket fire at targets.

NEWS FLASH: we actually got rain here, the past 4 days, and cooler temps, so I guess we have experienced WINTER in Gila Bend.