Fort Huachuca

Huachuca (wa-chu-ca) is generally thought to be the Apache work meaning "place of thunder". At the post flag pole the elevation is one mile high.

The building that houses the museum was built in 1892 as a bachelor officers quarters. It was the 54th and final building in the construction of the Old Post at Fort Huachuca which was started 10 years earlier.

There was an exhibit of the Buffalo Soldiers because many black soldiers were trained at the fort. "Black Jack" Pershing, the general that led the army into Mexico after Pancho Villa, worked at the fort and got the name "Black Jack" because he promoted the enlistment of blacks into the army.

Interesting, eh?

Read the exhibit for the explanation of how Tombstone, AZ got its name. There's much more in the museum but you'll just have to visit yourself.

Miscellaneous Southern Arizona

We took a trip further south and east in Arizona and we came across this area of grazing land. Where are the cacti?
Just saw this VW Bug in a parking lot and had to take a photo.
You think they are into VW Bugs?

We stopped at the Lavender Mine Pit just outside of Bisbee. That's one big hole.

Then we passed through this tunnel on Hwy 80 between Bisbee and Tombstone

North of Tombstone it looks like the old section of the road ran on the other side of this mound. Looked real interesting.

36th Street Trailhead

We headed off to go hike in Tucson Mountain park but we went a different way and ended up finding a different trailhead.

From the parking lot we could see this interesting building on top the hill.

Course that's where we wanted to go. The trails in this area of the park are for vehicles.

This last part of the climb to the bulding was steep and rocky.

The stairs going to the second story were in fine shape but most of the roof was gone. It had a nice fireplace.
Nolan found this door step concrete that said the site was homesteaded on April 21, 1928 with a signature that we couldn't read.

From here we could see the parking lot and our little red car.

Then we climbed a higher hill and looked down at the little home on the first hill.

See how wide the trail is?

Nolan wanted to climb this hill but we don't have any mountain climbing equipment.

We were appalled at the amount of trash and broken glass that covered the ground.

Just look at all the glass around this prickly pear cactus!

Rainbows and Plant

The sun came out while it was still raining on us and we got a good double rainbow.
It's hard to see the faint top one but it's complete! This is only the second complete double rainbow I can remember seeing.

And where does the rainbow end? Well that building is the county jail. LOL
This is the only plant we have kept since hitting the road. Nolan got it out of a dumpster at least 5 years ago. But it was pot-bound and had to be thinned.

I got a friend to take some of it. All I have left is about one third if the plant. It'll grow.

Another Tucson Mountain Park Hike

This is where we parked for the previous hike and we had one more hike we wanted to do out of here so we came back today to do it.

We wanted to hike to this rock on the hill. It wasn't easy finding the trail and we ended up cross-country-ing to the bottom of the rock.

We made it to the bottom of the rock. There was a small cave behind where I am standing. It was a nice shady place to take a break and catch my breath.

As we hiked around the bottom of the rock, we saw this saguaro growing out of the rocks. There are two even smaller saguaros growing just over the top of the big one and to the left. You will have to enlarge the photo to see them.

This is the view as we climbed to the top.

If you go back to the first photo of the rock on the hill, you can see small ones caught in the middle. We tried valiantly to keep them in place.

From the top of the rock, we looked east and could see some of Tucson in the distance.

Another view from the rock.

We then went back down the hill and found the trail to that saddle in the east so we could see what was over the hill.

Well there's a lot more park between the saddle and Tucson

Then we hiked to the south and looked over another saddle.

Tucson Mountain Park Hike

We went hiking in Tucson Mountain Park again just at a different place.

There's a trail up to this boulder that we will hike another time.

Nolan got a hitchhiker. Yep he got too close to a cholla cactus and it attached to the camera bag. Then he got his arm too close and it jumped onto him!

Those spines really dig in. I took two rocks and yanked the thing off of him. He only yelped a little.

Notice he isn't getting too close to the cacti now?

Well until he started pretending to be one.

We ended up running out of trail or else we just missed a turn and followed a "path" where the water had run off the hillside. Anyway we eventually followed a wash back downhill.