Visit to National Memorial Park

No wonder people carry guns here!

We visited the country's only National Memorial Park yesterday - Coronado.  Located south of us, on the Mexican/US border, chosen to be located here with the understanding that this park would be an international park with Mexico and the US - that hasn't happened yet - they hope some day in the future.  The park commemorates Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition from Mexico up through to Kansas and return in the 1540s, a 'probable' route that he used through this area.  Spain sent out Coronado to find the seven cities of gold that previous explorers Cortes, Pizarro, de Vaca, and Father Marcos de Niza told about and exaggerated.  Coronado never found the cities nor the gold but did meet many native Indians and introduced the Spanish culture to them and to this day Spanish culture has integrated into our life with food, customs, words and phrases used, Catholicism, farming.

Trail to top of Coronado Peak

After leaving the visitors center we started out on a paved road but quickly it turned into a dirt, narrow, windy dusty road and started up the  switchbacks up to the top of Coronado Peak to get to the hiking trails at the top of the mountain. As Dave was driving up all I could think about was he had lots of practice with narrow twisty roads from our time spent in Glacier and Going-To-The-Sun Road.  Met a car coming down and we just made it by - by inches - to continue to the top. Not quite as pretty as Glacier with snow capped mountains - in fact this view was desert, dry, but still quite impressive.  This park borders Mexico and from the top you could see the border clearly defined with a wall. We encountered a National Park Trail Crew rehabbing the beginning of the trailhead moving huge boulders up farther onto the mountain - phew!  After reading the warning sign right at the beginning of the trailhead, we now understand why many people carry guns.  When we visited Amerind last Sunday a group of motorcycles came in - all weaving gun holsters and guns - even the women (theirs were in pink)!

Lovely day there - the vista views were amazing.  Looking north we were on the back side of the Huachuca Mountains and at  the other side of the mountain is Fort Huachuca Army Base and Sierra Vista.  Lots of history in this area.  What we didn't see during this visit is Border Patrol cars/vans.  Where we are camping - this is a common sight, seeing them sitting off the road, watching everything and everyone.  Have to go through check points each time we go to Tucson, common thing for us now. At night we can see the Border Patrol checkpoint out of Tombstone from our camper and Dave says he can see spot lights moving around.  Some times we see their helicopters flying around, low, looking for someone.  Doesn't scare us, just a fact of life here.

On our way back we decided to go out to eat - something we don't do alot of.  We were told of a great pizzeria not far from the National Memorial called Mimosa.  Wow!  Great pizza!  But a nice way to celebrate both our birthdays together.  We will begin today to pack the final things up and tomorrow we will move up to Picacho and leave the RV here and come back Tuesday morning to move off anything left or forgot and make sure all liquids are emptied, then move it to the dealer in Huachuca City - not far from here.  Picacho here we come!