Originally Posted by Wilbur

Organ Pipe is unique and has some great walking and hiking and bird watching, and it is glorious when the desert is in bloom. On the other hand, the temperature and the Border Patrol can really make it a miserable place, depending on the time of year you visit.

If you can get there in the winter or spring, and you like hiking, it can be well worth your time to go down 85 and spend some time at Organ Pipe. In the late summer it can be hot (duh). Just the drive down 85 is pretty cool, and if you decide to get out and hike, great. However, people often claim that this is the only place to see organ pipe cactus, which isn't true - my neighbor next door has some, as does the guy down the street.

A word about the Border Patrol. For some reason I have had some weird experiences with them, and so have my hiking and birding buddies, in and around Organ Pipe. Despite the fact that we are the most obvious tourists from the valley you could ever see, we have been stopped and questioned multiple times on route 85 on a single trip, and this isn't unique. Adding to the frustration was that these were not at alll positive interactions. Further other things we saw on that same trip indicated that the BP was utterly wasting their time and our tax dollars just hassling people at convenient spots rather than actually doing their job. In any case, [removed quote of now-deleted material] in that part of the state, so be prepared to be stopped, to show identification, to prove you own or have rented your car, to answer a lot of damn fool questions, and to generally waste a certain amount of time. You may experience the same sort of thing if you visit the Sierra Vista area or Bisbee. Rant over.