Friends and Chiricahua National Monument

We are on the move again. We left Casa Grande on Sunday heading to St. David AZ for two weeks. On the way down we took a detour to visit Jackie's high school classmate, Merrilee and her husband, Ron, who live in No. Tucson. Here we are enjoying the visit on the patio. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place to be.

We parked our rig on the road near their home, but were able to watch it from the patio area.

After arriving at the RV Park, we spent the rest of Sunday and part of Monday visiting with friends we have met on the road, who also have Montanas; Rod and Ardith also Charlie and Nila, great to see them again. Ardith had dinner ready for us on Sunday night so we could relax after setting up the rig (and it was delicious!). We played dominos last night till after 10:00 pm and had a ball. They both have to move out of this park tomorrow, but are only going a few miles down the road so will be able to get together again.

Today, Tuesday we headed out to Chiricahua (chira-cowa) National Monument Park here in Southern Arizona. It also is called Land of Standing up Rocks, and after you see the pictures you will see why. It was only about an 80-mile trip to the park. We paid our fee, oh no, at our age we get in for free. We went to the visitors’ center and filled up on the history of the area, picked up some maps and headed back to the truck for the 9-mile drive to the top of the mountain.
On the way up we checked out the small camping area. Great spot to camp if you are tenting or in a very small RV. We left the campground and came around a corner to witness an area of the mountain that is called Organ Pipe Formation. After stretching our necks looking we will only share 3 pictures of this area.

You have to click and enlarge some of these to really see what we got to see.

We continued (very slowly) up the hill and to our dismay we had gone through the area of all the great views…NOT. On the way up we could see all the way to the East coast, well maybe New Mexico.

We parked at the top, had lunch and took a short hike on the Massai Nature Trail. Wow, what a view looking down at the thousands of rock formations. You can see for yourself what it is like. We had our picture taken by some people we met on the trail. I think you can see Mexico behind us. Well maybe close but you sure could see for miles and miles.

We went about a ½ mile down the road to another trailhead where we could hike to Echo Canyon Grotto. This took us down to an area where we could walk around to the base of some of these magnificent displays of nature. Took a few shots from this area. A few would mean that today we took 110 pictures. Wish we could share all of them with you, but maybe another time.

This is at the bottom of several large rock piles. Not sure what whould happen if there was an earthquake.

The other thing that we thought was really great, this is the first time in months we walked in a forest of pine and fir trees. We just loved the smell. I guess we do miss Washington!

To be continued...