Chiricahua National Monument

This weekend we decided to go camping.  We had originally planned to go to the Gila Cliff Dwellings but then one of Matt's coworkers told him about Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona.  Once Matt looked it up we agreed that we had to go see it.  It took us just under 4 hours to drive there and it was so worth it.  I have to say, I was not expecting to be wowed but once we got there we were all pretty wowed.  We camped at the only campground within the monument and it was really nice.  The campground as well as all of the awesome trails were established during the occupation by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the 1930s.  The park is famous for all of the rock pinnacles but the rest of the scenery was pretty spectacular as well.  We arrived on Saturday morning and set up camp.  After a quick lunch we headed out on our first hike.  We were able to combine several of the most popular trails into an 8 mile hike that gave us a good variety of scenery.  The creek was dry while we were there due to an unusually dry winter in Arizona, but if it had been running we would have skirted it throughout most of our hike. A favorite of this hike was the grotto on the Echo Canyon trail loop.  We headed back to camp exhausted. The girls decided to run ahead of us for the last 2 miles so they were really exhausted.  The campground has an amphitheater with evening ranger talks so we took advantage of that to learn a little more about the monument. After s'mores   we called it an early night in the tent with a little Harry Potter read aloud courtesy of Hannah.  Matt slept like a log but the girls and I may have a small fear of bears so our night was a little more restless.  They have postings all over camp everywhere you go about this being black bear country...the rangers warned us several times that day...and I may have googled it a few times before we left.  I know they say it rarely ever happens but still makes for a restless night. The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast and started packing up.  We did not have another hike planned because we thought we were going to get a lot of rain according to the forecast but it was actually just sprinkling and nice and cloudy.  We decided to get one more hike in before we drove home.  Rachel was not as enthusiastic as everyone else about another hike (or any hike for that matter) so she stayed in the car to do homework at the trail-head.  We hiked a little more than 4 miles and saw even more beautiful scenery.  It was amazing how varied the hikes were. After the hike we made some peanut butter sandwiches and started the trip home.  I think we all loved the park more than we thought we would.  As a matter of fact, we are planning to come back in the Fall.

Solitary Hiker = Happy Hiker

Kissing Rocks?

Solitary Hiker = Ticked off Tennager

Shark Fin Rock