Desert Southwest Trip, Tombstone; Chiricahua National Monument; Fort Bowie

 The next morning we got up and had our complimentary breakfast at the nearby restaurant.  Our waitress was very friendly and we struck up a conversation with her, and oddly enough, it turns out she was from Wasilla!  She grew up here and still has a lot of family here, and she even knows someone that we know!  So weird.

Anyhoo, after we ate, we took another walk in the neighboring streets cuz it was such a beautiful morning and the temps were perfect.  We decided we would take a walk to the famous "Boot Hill Cemetery".  Of course I was VERY interested in going there, but Chuck wasn't too keen on it because he found out you had to pay to get in there, and I think he thought it would be too touristy.  But we headed in that direction anyway and came upon a big cemetery that was not Boot Hill.  We walked around in there for awhile, and Chuck was on his phone trying to find out where Boot Hill was.  By the time he figured it out, a whole hour had passed and then he didn't want to go there anymore (he didn't really want to go there anyway so I don't think he was really trying very hard to find the right directions.) I am still bummed about that.

Instead of going to Boot Hill we went to check out the historical courthouse.  That was very interesting.   You can walk into the actual courtroom where a lot of interesting trials happened.

They had a lot of displays in there about various trials.  One famous one was about a young man who robbed a store and killed a few people in Bisbee (another town not too far from Tombstone).  His gang was sentenced to hang, but he himself was not because he wasn't actually involved in the robbery.  But they put him in jail anyway, and since he was so notorious, a lot of the townspeople wanted him hung, so the townspeople hung him from a pole which is just outside this courthouse.

Of course it was illegal to do this, so the coroner, as you can see, sympathized with the townspeople and fudged the death report and said he died of probable strangulation.

The whole courthouse was turned into a museum so there were a lot of interesting things there, including stuff about Wyatt Earp and some his personal belongings.

After spending time there, we left Tombstone and went to Chiricahua National Monument.

Of course we took tons of pictures, but I have to constrain myself here and just give you some ideas as to what it was like there.  It was really amazing.  I am still awestruck as to the formation of these rocks - how did they end up like that?  My mind keeps defaulting to the Flood of Noah's day, but how did these rocks get formed like this?  Some rocks are on top of each other and you can't help wondering why they don't fall off.

It was another hot day there, but it was "nice" hot.  Without the humidity, the heat there isn't that bad, so we were able to keep hiking without getting heatstroke or too exhausted.  The trail was very long and kept going down down down before it started going back up again.  There weren't very many people on the trail, but we were surprised that most of the people on the trail were older than us.  If they can hike this trail, surely we can!  We even saw an old guy wearing an Alaska shirt, so of course we stopped and chatted with him for a few minutes while his wife tried to catch up with him.

So after we were done with that trail, it was getting late in the afternoon, so we got in the car and headed towards our next destination towards Carlsbad.  But on the way, we happened upon a sign that pointed to "Fort Bowie".  We never heard of that place before, but being a brown sign (historical marker), Chuck turned down that road to check it out.  I was really surprised that he did that (without even asking me if I wanted to go there), cuz usually when he's on his way somewhere, he just wants to keep driving and get there.  Anyway, I'm really glad we went to Fort Bowie cuz I think that is one of my favorite parts of our whole trip.

We had to drive a few miles to get there, and when we got to the parking lot, we discovered it was going to be a mile and a half hike into the mountains.  Do we really want to do this after that long hike in Chiricahua?  Yes, let's do it!

Along the trail there are spots where they have historical markers for you to read:  stuff about trails where the U.S. Army led their wagons of supplies and whatnot.  There was also a spot where there are remnants of a little place where an old man used to live out there in the mountainous wilderness.  Anyway, about a half mile into the hike we came upon this cemetery. You have to go through a gate to go in there, but it's fully open to the public.  The tombstones themselves are not the original wooden ones which were rotting away, so they were replaced by these white ones so they are easier to read.  Interestingly, a lot of them give a name (or it would say "unknown") followed by "killed by Indians".  I would've gotten some closeups of these, but my camera battery died, so I had to rely on Chuck to take the pictures.

And this one here was an interesting unexpected surprise.

I wish Chuck had gotten a closer picture of it.  In case you can't read it, it says "In Memory of Little Robe, Son of Geronimo, Apache Chief, Died Sept 10, 1885, Age 2 Years".  They also buried the US Army soldiers here that died, but they later got moved to a national military cemetery in California and only left the civilians here.

Going to Fort Bowie was worth it just for this alone.  But I did not know that Fort Bowie was the place where Geronimo was kept prisoner and he also surrendered there.

Interesting how you can see that the mountains in the background match the mountains in the photo, so you know this is genuine. Wow, Geronimo was in this very spot! Anyhoo so it turns out that Fort Bowie was an Army Base that was stationed there because of the Indian Wars, especially with the Apaches.  The whole place is in ruins now and only the foundations of the buildings are still there, but there are markers at every one telling you what the buildings were.

There were lot and lots of remains to walk around and see, but that would be too many pictures, so this just gives you an idea.  A person could spend hours there.  It's hard to believe that place was once hustling and bustling with soldiers and Indian prisoners.  It was so interesting - I wouldn't mind going back there again.  And now I feel the need to go to the library and check out some books about Geronimo so I can learn more about it.

Close by, there are some more trails that lead you to the original Fort Bowie before this one was built.  It was a lot smaller.  You can see the ruins of it, but they don't have all the markers there so you know what they are - they pretty much leave you guessing.  That was interesting too.  Anyhoo, we got there late in the afternoon, spent another few hours in this place, and we still had to hike a mile and a half back to the car, so we figured we better start walking because we could see that the sun was getting closer to the mountain tops and would soon be behind them.  And I did NOT want to be roaming those desert hills in the dark!  (how would I be able to scan for spiders?)  The sun kept getting lower and lower and I have to say I have never in my life seen my shadow get that ridiculously long before!  We made it to the car just in time.

Chuck likes taking pictures of interesting flowers that he sees on the trails.

We also saw this beetle.  We don't ever see bugs like this in Alaska.

So that was Day 2.  Hopefully, to be continued soon.