Cochise Stronghold, Chiricahua National Monument and a Motel with Heat

After seeing where the cowboys and the outlaws hung out, we went to visit Cochise Stronghold, where Cochise and his apache warriors were based during their war with the white settlers. These days the Stronghold is better known as a hiking and climbing destination. As Megan’s finger still wasn’t quite back to 100% we focused on hiking and exploring, which was probably all to the good since the afternoon winds were howling. We hiked from the east side over the pass and down into the west and then back, past huge rock walls and funky desert plants – a truly beautiful place!


"Duck on a Rock"

After our time at Cochise Stronghold, we were heartened by how warm it was camping even at the quite high elevation of 5000 feet, so we trucked over across the valley from Cochise to the Chiricahua mountains (to pronounce, think ‘cheery-cow-a’). It is a magical place, with hundreds of towers of basalt rock (but no rock-climbing allowed), all shaped by winds over thousands of years. Of course, although it seems obvious, we never considered how windy hiking in such an area would be! Also, the temperature plummeted at night so we spent about 48 hours in the park completely frozen. To warm up, we hiked for about 15 miles during our one full day there, but at no time were we able to take off any of the many layers we had worn….After eating pretty much all our food and quite bored of the chill we decided to recharge in the nearest town we could find. One motel room with the heat cranked, two showers, a very large pizza and some cheesy 1980’s movies put us right again. The next day we hit the road into New Mexico.