We took a couple of rest days after climbing at Cochise, to recover from the long climbs and spend some time touring the area. First up was a stop at the infamous town of Tombstone, which is only half an hour away. I was pretty excited to see some authentic buildings and artifacts from the period. What a dissappointment! It is unfortunately mostly filled with privately run tourist traps, and though I'm sure there are interesting things to see in some of them, we weren't in the mood to fork over the money. The whole place reeked of tackyness. I was so bummed I didn't take a single picture.
Next up we went to Chiricahua National Monument, which is chock full of awesome pinnacles.
Sadly, climbing is not allowed, which made our hike feel like torture. It seemed around every corner would be another another collection of awesome granite towers that we would of loved to climb.
This one had an awesome, well protect-able, crack running up it.
We had to resign ourselves to scrambling up a few of the short ones.
The views from the trail were also pretty stunning.
This entire area is full of great scenery. The various mountain ranges are called 'islands in the sky', as they poke out of the relatively flat desert basins, and provide various micro climates supporting a huge variety of life.
I still can't get over how cool the blooms of some of these desert plants are.
I'm not sure of the scale but the tower with the crack also looks like it could fall over if you hung off the side. But that canyon is super cool!
ReplyDelete