Patagonia Arizona

After breakfast on Friday, we headed for the birding trail at Patagonia Lake State Park. We ran into a group of people with binoculars, who asked if we were joining the bird hike; we did not know that the hike was happening, but we joined. Mary was our guide; she is a volunteer who gets a free campsite for volunteering. The birders kept calling out birds that they saw; we probably did not see half of the birds named, but we did see some. We saw both a Northern Cardinal and a Pyrruloxia, a kind of desert Cardinal. We learned to identify the Scaup; distinguishing between the lesser and greater scaup was beyond our abilities. ;-) Sandi enjoyed seeing the Great Blue Heron, but the guide was disappointed not to see the less common Green Heron. We learned that there were birding boat tours in the morning, and decided to sign up.

We started listening to Patagonia KPUF, a real community radio station. The town also has a monthly newspaper, the Patagonia Regional Times, supported by donations and advertising.

We headed for the Patagonia Library, which we were told had the best free internet signal in town. Sandi had a business Zoom call, while Richard did internet research. Then we went to Gathering Grounds for lunch; they were short -handed, so service seemed slow, although the food was good. We had an outside table, and the people watching was interesting. Sandi noted that people around us seemed like us, older and educated. Patagonia is an old mining town, which is now more of an ecotourism destination, with birding the big draw. We also visited a couple of arts & crafts stores, and picked up beer and lettuce from the Patagonia Market. We came back to the campground, where we went to the visitor center and bought our tickets for the boat birding tour Saturday morning. We talked to a couple from Quebec, who had founded an organization dedicated to clean up of outdoor recreation areas, partnering with businesses. We talked to some other Canadians as well. There are more Coloradoans and Canadians at the campground than we might have expected. The campground was noisier and busier than the previous night, due to the weekend.

Saturday morning we went on the boat birding tour, led by Mary, with Roth driving. Mary pointed out many ducks, including Merganzers and Shovelbills. We had a mystery in that there was an animal in a tree that no one could identify. Our best guess is that he was a Coati, a kind of Racoon more common in Mexico, but we cannot be sure. 

 After the tour, we headed for town, stopping at the very interesting cemetery, with some graves decorated with seemingly random artifacts, such as rotary dial phones. Sandi thought that some of the graves must have been cosmic tolks. One grave was covered with mirror glass. There we many Hispanic names, and some graves with homemade markers; the photo is of a marker that includes horseshoes.

We visited the Paton Hummingbird center, where we saw a violet capped hummingbird, a rare bird indeed. We had “burros” at Pancho Villa's restaurant, and started walking. We stopped at Dia de los Muertos, where we heard about the woman artist who had created the store, and her remarkable son, focused on going good in the world. We stopped at the bakery and bought fudge, a bottle of wine, and some ice cream. They only had one loaf of bread left, but we learned that we could call and order bread. We have been very impressed with the local businesses. The bartender told us that a singer-songwriter would start playing in a few minutes, but we kept walking. We picked up some vegetables at Red Mountain grocery store, a cash only place, and headed back to the campground, where we picked up a permit to hike on Sunday.

Sunday we went for a hike on the Blackhawk trail, which took us across the spillway, down to the old railroad grade, and then back up the Sonoita creek trail, about 3 miles. Pretty but very dry, except near the creek. We had lunch at Common Grounds, where many of the customers were bicyclists. We spoke to the lady in the next campsite, who retired, sold her house, and is now full timing with a pickup truck and an Airstream trailer. She let me borrow her Oru folding kayak, which I found surprisingly light. I enjoyed paddling around the upper end of the lake. There were hundreds of blackbirds in the reeds, and a Great Blue Heron on a stump.

On Monday, we went on the bird hike with Suska, followed by a bird boat tour with Mary. The boat tour was windy, but we saw a flotila of Merganzers,, a couple of blue herons, a turkey vulture, a Phainopepla, a Pyrrholoxia, and some Ruddy Ducks and Northern Shovelers. After the boat tour, we headed for the Paton Hummingbird center, and again saw the rare violet crowned Hummingbird. We walked in The Nature Conservancy property, but did not see many birds, as it was the middle of the day. We had ice cream at Gathering Grounds, and bought some groceries at Red Mountain foods, where we talked to the manager, soon to be owner. We drove up to the old school, now a museum, and the office for Borderlands Restoration Network, which collects seeds.  There is a roadside shrine cut into the rock by the side of the road by the Telles family, fulfilling a vow from when their sons were in WWII.  People continue to leave offerings.

On Tuesday we headed for Nogales, AZ, and started with lunch at La Ley, a funky restaurant located on a side street between two auto shops. The reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor were very good, but we were not impressed with the tacos that we had ordered. Perhaps if we had ordered something different we would have enjoyed it. We parked on the street near the old courthouse, and walked towards the border. There were many empty storefronts, perhaps due to the border closures. All the signs on the shops were in Spanish, no surprise. There was a binational hazardous material exercise on the railroad. Lots of banners, but not something open to the public. 

 At the border we talked to a border patrol agent, who told us that we could cross the border without a passport, just an ID and our vaccination cards. We had already decided that we were not going to cross. He took our photo, with the border wall in the background.   Note the razor wire.  We visited the museum in the old firehouse, but it was not as good as most local museums. The attendant told us that Nogales was created by the Santa Fe railroad, who built a line to the port of Guaymas, Mexico. We found some ice cream, and then tried to reach the border from the road to Patagonia. We got close, and our phones welcomed us to Mexico, but we did not reach the actual border.