2020 Winter Camping Trip Day26-2nd day in Saguaro National Park

Saguaro

2020 Winter Camping Trip Day26, 2020/12/21

This day we traced back to the trailhead. I enjoyed Saguaro in the morning sun. The picture in the left is one of the impressive Saguaro. There are many arms, meaning it is at least more than 100 years old. It is very cool. Also I am grateful to be able to see such a historic Saguaro in person.

After backpacking, what do you do? 

Feast.

We went to a Mexican restaurant to have a take-out. We were in southern Arizona, why not having Mexican food? I first met Mexican food when I lived in California. There are so many authentic Mexican places in California. In my neighborhood there, there were 4 Mexican restaurants within 3 blocks.  Now in Massachusetts, I don't see a single authentic one, although I know some fake ones. We yelped and we went to the place called Salsa Verde. Although they took long to be ready, which made me impatient, but it was paid off by authentic food. Ah! This was the one I was looking for in the East. 

Then we went to the car campground run by the National Forest. The campground name is Gordon Hirabayashi. I immediately noticed that Hirabayashi is a Japanese name. Since the first name Gordon is American name, I suspected that he was Japanese American and I thought that possibly the place was the internment campground during WWII. Sadly, usually those Japanese-Americans' internment camps are in the harsh environment area in the mountains and I saw several of them while my outdoor camping trips. For example, Manzanar is near Mount Whitney. Another example is Tulelake, near Lava Beds National Monuments. 

There was a sign and panel at the campground about Gordon Hirabayashi and we were able to learn about him. He challenged the interment camp order in 1942, and he turned himself into FBI and been sentenced. The government at that time didn't transport him to prison, so Gordon Hirabayashi hitchhiked from Washington state to Arizona. Wardens at the prison camp didn't have papers for Gordon Hirabayashi, so he had to go to a movie. In 1987, over 40 years later, his case was overturned. More detail can be found here in Wikipedia Hirabayashi vs United States

sunset

From the hills behind the Hirabayashi campground we went to see a sunset and the Saturn and Jupiter conjunction. The sunset was amazing. From the hill, the sun set over the mountains and far below Tsuson town was seen. This day right after sunset was supposed to be Saturn and Jupiter conjunction. We saw Saturn and Jupiter, but two were not combined. They were very close, but definitely apart! Hummmm. Anyhow it was still good to see such close planets in the amazing place with admiring Gordon Hirabayashi.

Two planets

After checking out the sunset, we had fire and dinner. Because we were able to forage as much as we want in the National Forest, we had enough logs to have long campfire. For dinner we had salad from Safeway to feed veges to our bodies.