Cave Creek Canyon and the Chiricahua Mountains

One of the fun things about staying in the mountains is that, just a short drive away, you can find wonderful sights you might drive for hours to see at other places.  Cave Creek Canyon, which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service as part of Coronado National Forest, is such a place.  

We drove into the mountains with Sajad as a guide, and discovered that the road curves downward into a canyon and a lush wooded forest.  There are some homes, private property along the way, with cattle grazing close to the road.  There is also a creek bed which is almost dry at this time of year but as can be seen from the bank, it must be full and roaring after the rainy season in spring.  There is also evidence of an old mining operation.  When we were there it was quiet, with only a few hikers besides ourselves, with a sort of meditative atmosphere in the woods. 

 

Then some weeks later, on Christmas Day, we decided we wanted to see more of the Chiricahua Mountains.  So we went back to the canyon and kept driving.  The road wound up and up, and soon became one of the rockiest, bumpiest roads we have ever encountered.  In places it was worse than the Dalton Highway in Alaska – washboard dirt, with huge rocks, barely one lane wide, hugging the side of the mountain.  We considered turning around but there really wasn’t room. Eventually we came to one of those cryptic government signs: “Road not maintained for winter use.”  Yet it was open.  

We had heard there is sometimes snow on this road, but there wasn’t this day, and it wouldn’t have stayed long anyway as it was in the 50s.  Though not really cold, it was quite windy, and once or twice LCR got out of the car to take photos but I stayed in.  I did not think my pictures would be worth standing in a stiff breeze on a narrow road overlooking a deep valley.  In the end, though, I could not resist a few shots of the mountains with yet more mountains in the background, and the zigzagging roads below. 

The road led up the mountain, around and back down.  In this area, there were cattle right on the road, not merely in fields alongside the road.  We had seen warning signs about roaming cattle all over the area but this is the first time we actually had to stop and sometimes turn out for them.  A deer dashed perilously close to the car across our path, too.   

Besides breathtaking mountain views, we could see evidence of some wildfire damage, at least a few years old, I'd say.  

Though it took several hours, the distance was in reality less than 20 miles.  On a map the road looks deceptively like a short, straight line from Portal to the Chiricahua National Monument. 

When we got to the National Monument, we really could not spend much time looking around because the drive up and through the mountains had taken so long that it was time to head back.  No way were we going back over the mountain again, as it would have been nearly dark by the time we arrived, so we took the GPS route and went around, which took hours anyway.  The Monument itself looks like it would be worth a look at some point, though.  The towering rock formations are volcanic in origin, cooled and solidified ash from long-ago eruptions. 

Signage:  Bumper sticker spotted in Douglas, AZ:  Watch out for the idiot behind me!