January 13
On Thursday, after what seemed like a very short month in Green Valley AZ, we packed up the car and headed east to Orlando. We plan to take about 10 days to get there so we can stop and sightsee along the way. Our first stop was at Chiricahua National Monument about 90 minutes east of Green Valley. It reminded us of Arches National Park, except that it didn’t have any arches. But the rock formations were very similar with the columns, pillars and balanced rocks. It was quite beautiful. We took the scenic drive then headed off to Ft. Bowie National Historic Site about 30 minutes away.
The most interesting part of this park was the drive to get there. We had an 8-mile dirt road, only some of it improved, before arriving at the parking lot. But then we discovered that to get to the visitor center we had to hike 1.5 miles down a rocky, dirt path. It was the hike down that bothered us so much but the fact that we would have to hike back up to return to the car. Luckily, they had a handicap option, so we drove another 5 miles on the unimproved dirt road to get to a spot closer to the visitor center. We still had to walk a little way, but it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, there isn’t much left of this fort. It was very important in its day, though, especially during the Apache Wars from 1861-1886. We did stay long as there wasn’t much to see but the history is quite interesting so here’s a link to the Wikipedia page if you want to read more about it. Ft. Bowie
Ruins at Ft. Bowie
Then it was off to Las Cruces, NM where we spent the night. Before checking into the hotel, we stopped at the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument just west of the city. There was even less to take a picture of there than there was at Ft. Bowie. Apparently, it is best known for its Paleozoic Era fossils, none of which can be seen from the parking lot. And because we had no interest in hiking who knows how far (no visitor center means no map) through the desert to find them, we took a picture of the sign and left.
On Friday morning, we headed off to Organ Mountains Desert Peak National Monument which was about 20 miles east of Las Cruces. While the mountains were pretty, they didn’t seem to be that spectacular, so we asked the volunteer at the visitor center about its designation as a national monument. He told us that it was known for ruins of a Tuberculosis Sanitorium and an old hotel. In order to see the ruins, we would have had to hike 3 miles on an unpaved road. Not surprising to anyone who knows us, we took a pass, got our passport stamp and left.
Then it was off to White Sands National Monument about 40 miles northwest of Organ Mountains. This was truly spectacular. It was amazing how the terrain suddenly changed from brown desert to beautiful white sand dunes. There was a drive that took us through the dunes. We got out to walk a couple of times and had our picnic lunch surrounded by the dunes. As we walked on the boardwalk through the dunes, we kept expecting to see an ocean, but there was no water to be found. There are only a few gypsum sand dunes in the world, and this is the largest. It was well worth the side trip.
After a few hours in the small town of Alamogordo just east of the Monument so Peter could visit the New Mexico Museum of Space History (Lynn ran errands) we headed to El Paso where we spent Friday night.
Then today (Saturday) we left El Paso for Fort Davis National Historical Site. This was about as different from Ft. Bowie as you could get. While Ft. Bowie was all ruins, Ft. Davis had some very well-preserved buildings. Of course, many buildings were ruins, but there were several we could walk through, and many were furnished as they would have been when the fort was open. Ft. Davis was established in 1854 to protect travelers on the San Antonio-El Paso Road and is one of the best remaining examples of an Army fort of that era. We spent a very pleasant 90 minutes there walking around the buildings.
We’re spending the night in Alpine TX before heading off to Big Bend National Park tomorrow. We’ll talk with you soon.