Late Sunday afternoon in Ajo. The temperature is 86 degrees, down from 90. We awoke to the alarm at 5:00 a.m. and made our traditional sausage and eggs Sunday breakfast in the dark. Then with a bit of daylight showing on the eastern horizon we drove south to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. On this our second visit we planned to walk trails near and through the campground, to drive the Ajo Mountains Road, and to hike the “high elevation” Bulls pasture trail.

We passed the border patrol checkpoint at dawn and arrived at the campground as the sun appeared. Still 50 degrees we left our jackets on. The trail passed through desert flatland and a bushy wash. The vegetation and land here, as everywhere in western Arizona is dry. Winter rains did not come this year. The spring bloom is a bust. Birds are few and far between. Another couple reports that two years ago in March they saw this desert wet and in bloom. The park literature unobtrusively suggests that a spring bloom happens only every second or third year.

Nonetheless, the saguaro and palo verde trees and the spreading organ pipe cactus and ocotillo bushes provide exotic scenery. The last is finally coming into bloom but, wise desert plant, it has made no leaves this spring. Its ruby flowers will draw the humming birds north in the coming weeks. Now we find only a few around plantings and feeders.

A camper sits watching Gambel’s quail troop through the campground. A canyon wren sings from the desert and a rock wren claims the sand by the rest room. A curve-billed thrasher surveys its domain from the top of a cactus and phainopeplas engage in territorial dogfights. It is fun seeing the common desert birds, but we find no target birds, not even a gilded flicker.

Our auto tour and hike in the mountains yielded not much more. A canyon towhee greets us at the parking area and a red-tailed hawk floats into a cliff side nest. We lunch in the desert and then turn on the air conditioner as we bounce back to the paved road. We spend late afternoon in the motor home where it is somewhat cooler than the desert.

While this has not been the greatest week for the birds, the RV park here has internet access and that was vital to our finishing the taxes. Whew. We have not done that ourselves in decades. We estimate that the job took some twenty hours of hard work. Thank goodness for Turbotax and the internet. Among the curiosities.

We report different income to the state and federal governments. Multiple sets of books are ok for taxes. Wow! More bizarre is that our state income was different for North Carolina than for Pennsylvania. We had to tell Pennsylvania that our state income was more than indicated on the NC W-2.

Verizon, some of whose stock we own, spun off the phone book business as Ideaarc Corp. We got 8.12 shares, the 8 shares as stock and the 0.21 shares as cash ($21). Long, detailed instructions were provided on how to find the basis for “the sale” of the 0.12 shares. It took more than an hour to calculate the result. The capital gain was $3. Clueless as to whether or not this would be considered a long-term gain, we called it short-term assuming we acquired the stock on the day we sold it.

Turns out Pennsylvania deductions were inadequate and the state wants an $41 dollar (interest) penalty. The federal and NC deductions were excessive. I doubt that they will pay us any interest. Curious.

It turns out that, as has been the case since the kids graduated college, taxes were our largest expense in Year 2006. We made too much money. This year income should be way down and as a result of our discretion in not working and our taxes will be way down too. We had never realized that taxes were a discretionary expense. We were too busy working.

Our next stop is Yuma, Arizona and the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge. We hope that the waters of the Colorado River will be more conducive to birding.

[img_assist|fid=1024|thumb=1|alt=Organ Pipe Cactus, Azo, AZ]

[img_assist|fid=1021|thumb=1|alt=Anne with saguaro cactus|caption=These saguaro cacti can be quite tall, and you do not want to bump into their spines]

[img_assist|fid=1018|thumb=1|alt=Skeleton of organ pipe cactus, living opc and saguaro cactus|caption=Chuck with skeleton of an organ pipe cactus, the living one and a saguaro cactus are in the background]

[img_assist|fid=1015|thumb=1|alt=Abandoned ranch house, Alamo Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument|caption=A fixer-uper we are not buying]