Great shots!

The "ocotillo" blooms look more orange than others I've seen and not quite the right shape, maybe someone more experienced can ID 'em for you.

Jim

It is hard to tell from the picture, but the cholla looks like a silver cholla, found in AZ. It has nice spines that maintain their silver color. There are about 12 kinds of ocotillo, but the one pictured looks like Fouquieria splendens. The bloom looks like it is ending. The leaf on the AZ variety looks different from the CA native one. Most have an orange flower, although there is an uncommon white flowering variety.
There are also some nice native barrels in your picture. In the CA deserts, they are just beginning to bloom.

Hope you had a great trip to the Sonoran Desert. When I first came to Arizona, from Michigan, it was a bit of a shock for me. Not the lush landscape you have in the midwest. Arizona had bridges, but no water running below them. That year it rained 13 days in a row and flooded out all but 2 enterances into Phoenix. Worse than rush hour traffic. Below is just a bit of Arizona information.

Ocotillos grow in soil that is rich in lime, usually when you find a large acreage of Ocotillos, there is most likely some type of caverns lurk below, most famous in this state is Kartchner's caverns just south of Benson, Arizona.

The cholla is what we call (jumping cholla), it seems that if you barely come close to it, I swear it jumps right on you. Jumping cholla drops sections onto the ground and I had a dog once that got a piece on his leg and tried to get it off without human help, and got it stuck to the roof of his mouth. What a mess.

All in all, Arizona is a really cool state, and I hope you enjoyed your visit. Nice pictures and thanks for sharing.

Baci, I don't see any barrels. Those are saguaro, I believe.

Desert Gardener, I broke a piece off a cholla (not in the desert) to take home and root. Even tho' I handled it very carefully, fine little stickers got on my fingers, but I was able to remove them with tape. I think they did jump on me!

I love seeing the desert. Asked my husband to pull off the road several times so I could take photos. Do you think that would have anything to do with the flat tire we had?