Today we are visiting Ironwood National Park about two hours away from Phoenix. It is forecasted to be a hot day but it is also supposed to be cloudy so we decide on visiting today, who knows how it will be in the future? First we want to look for some special birds along the way but the desired site is blocked by road closed signs and we cannot get to it. So the only place where we see birds on the way is at an abandoned house with Meadowlarks and Doves surrounding it.
The first stop in Ironwood proper is to search for a mythical eighty plus armed saguaro. There is no official information on where to find it so we try to follow unofficial leads that take us to a dirt road near a mine. Surprising there is a trash can here that seems to be emplaced for visitors, aliens, who knows, but we take it as a sign that we are in the right spot.
But we are not. While we find many multi-armed saguaros, with more arms than usually really, there is no mythical 80+ arms one to be found. But it is nice to stretch our legs and there is also a cache to be found so it is not a lost stop.
While searching for the cache we find signs of migrants crossing through the area which is surprising as we are quite far north from the usual places. And then we find the cache and return to the car to drive to the Titan II missile site nearby.
This area was a hotbed of missile sites due to the Airforce bases nearby. All of the Titan II ones have seen been decomissioned and most are privately owned with the exception of two. One is a museum that we visited previously with relatives and the second one is here so we are curious to see what is left on public lands. The start is promising with lots of information about the side including a detailed graph of how it looked. We are curious how much is left especially as the site is free to visit.
And the answer is almost nothing is visible. The silo was first emptied of everything important then filled in with dirt and then bulldozed over so you need a good imagination to even imagine how it might have looked.
The trail is really short and well maintained and the only thing showing there was something here are the foundations of the radio antennas.
And the foundation of the refueling site, it is by far the largest remaining foundation on the site. From here they were refueling the rocket, quite rarely though according to the information panel as it is a very specialized fuel. And then it is time for the hike of the day described separately.
