SE Arizona

We’ve spent the past five days exploring the SE section of Arizona. We didn’t visit any border towns though, as there were reports of shootings and drug wars. We see Border Patrol police on every little back road. It’s hard to imagine that they are apprehending people sometimes 50 miles north of the border. but we keep encountering check points.

If you get to this part of the country, be sure to see Kartchner Caverns. We did a tour into this living cave which has several huge rooms, lots of stalactites and stalagmites, and is 80 degrees and moist. They have a sweet State Park campground that has large sites and easy access hiking. We stayed there three nights.

Road tripped one day down to Tombstone, which is an “old-time” western town. The best thing there was the World’s Largest Rose Bush. Really, there is such a thing. It was giant and growing on a horizontal trellis. It has a few small white flowers starting, but it will be in full bloom in a few weeks. See the photo of it. We then went down to Bisbee, an old mining town turned artist colony that reminded us of Nevada City, CA. It’s a very cute town next to a giant open pit copper mine.

Hiking was great in the Chiricahua Mountains. We spent a day in the National Monument on the east side where the trails wind through hoodoos and caverns that were absolutely glorious. Today we went up Cave Creek on the western side by Portal , and it was just as beautiful. The rock outcroppings are awesome and the vegetation varied. We were amidst Ponderosa Pines and Sycamore, Oaks and Yucca, and the creeks were flowing hard. There is still snow on the peaks and we actually encountered some on the trail. We also encountered a rather testy bull on the trail, that charged us and we had to jump a fence. Then he jumped the fence and we had to jump back. Fortunately that’s where it ended. We also saw wild turkeys and a coyote.

The last three days were very windy. We pulled in our slides so the slide awnings would not get battered. The cold front finally came through last night. A lot of dark clouds but not a lot of rain. Today was absolutely gorgeous, but still a little cool. It is supposed to warm up from here on in.