From the Road: Ocotillo, Coffee,Palo Verde, and The Turtle Mountains

After my overnight stop in the Whipples, I drove north, figuring I'd get a couple more photos of the Turtle Mountains. No, wait—from many previous trips, I knew the dirt road going out to the Turtles would be a good place to pull over for a pit stop.

I'd forgotten how tall the ocotillo can grow!

Ocotillo with Jeep for scale and the northern Turtle Mountains in the background. The hazy mountains on the right are the Old Woman Mountains.

I have a couple stories about the Turtle Mountains, one of which features an old prospector who successfully witched the copper pennies my field assistant and I hid beneath some smoothed-over sand. I'm still a little dumfounded by his luck—or did he have an exceptionally precise witching tool?

Making coffee in the back of the Jeep, a somewhat messy prospect due to the lack of a proper gold (or silver) cone-shaped filter.

I parked near a shaggy-looking Palo Verde tree.

The ocotillo is diagnostic of the Sonoran Desert (biotically speaking), as might be the Palo Verde tree (AKA paloverde).