Vagabond Tracks — by Paul & Amy

9-13 September:  For our trip through Arizona, we focused on the southeastern part of the state.  First, we camped and hiked in the Sonora Desert region.  The saguaro cactus, which seems so emblematic of Arizona, is widespread in that region.  Usery Mountain Regional Park, east of Mesa, is a great spot for camping and hiking in the desert landscape while being close enough to Phoenix for easy access to attractions there.  We also got to visit with our friend Bev, who had moved from two houses away from ours on Long Pond to Mesa a couple of years ago.  Bev recommended the Wind Cave Trail near our campground, so we hiked that in the morning before the major heat of the day.  This popular trail meanders gently up among cacti and desert shrubs and across a rocky slope to a shallow alcove.  We stopped along the trail to chat with the park’s friendly and knowledgeable interpretive ranger, “Ranger B,” and learned how to tell a barrel cactus from a saguaro of the same size and about palo verde (“green stick”), Arizona’s state tree.  The bark on the trunk and branches of palo verde is indeed bright green; only the thick bark on large trunks of old trees becomes wrinkled and gray.  We also learned that Ranger B knows Bev—she does a lot of volunteer work in the park and is a friend and neighbor of his.  We spent the afternoon at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, which showcases the arts and cultures of Arizona’s 22 sovereign tribal nations.

barrel cactus, ocotillo, and saguaro

Our exploration of Arizona’s desert region next shifted to the Tucson area.  On the way there, we stopped to see Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.  Although the inside exhibits were closed due to Covid, the self-guided tour of the ruins, with its many informational signs, was well worth seeing.  The main structure, built around 1350 and protected by a steel and concrete canopy since 1932, is the ruins of a rectangular building four stories high and 60 feet long, named Casa Grande by the Spanish.  This is the largest known structure built in the Sonoran Desert during the Hohokam cultural period.  The orientation and openings of the walls are related to astronomical alignments.  Surrounding this central building were many much smaller adobe buildings of the village.

People lived in permanent settlements in what is now central and southern Arizona as early as the year 300 and were able to thrive in the desert conditions by building extensive networks of irrigation canals for agriculture (corn, beans, squash, tobacco, cotton, and agave), primarily along the Salt River and Gila River valleys.  They traded pottery and jewelry for goods and materials from as far away as California, the Great Plains, the Colorado Plateau, and Mexico, and began to concentrate in large villages like Casa Grande.  The Hohokam Classic Period extended from about 1150 until the 1400s, but only ruins were left by the time the first Spanish missionaries arrived in 1694.  In 1892, after 200 years of further damage by vandals and souvenir hunters, Casa Grande became the first archaeological reserve in the U.S.  Indigenous people living today in this part of the American Southwest are descended from the Ancestral People who once mastered this demanding environment.
Casa Grande ruins

We camped in Tucson Mountain Park, west of the city.  The large campground was almost empty, because their busy season doesn’t usually start until November.  From our campsite we had good views of birds, sighting our first Gila woodpeckers and white-winged doves.  On a morning run I saw a huge pale green toad or frog (unfortunately, a road kill) and later found out it was a Colorado River toad (aka Sonoran Desert toad).  After freshly baked banana bread for breakfast, we spent most of the day at the nearby Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.  Part zoo and part botanical garden, there is a wealth of material to see and learn along the attractively landscaped walkways.  The cactus garden section was one of the highlights and the docents were very friendly and informative.  In the latter part of the afternoon, we went to the western section of Saguaro National Park for the scenic drive and a short hike to see some petroglyphs.

The next day we concentrated on the eastern section of Saguaro NP on the other side of Tucson.  After going to the gift shop at the visitor center, we went for a hike up onto the end of a ridge.  When we reached a knob on the ridge with a good view, we stopped for lunch and then hiked back down.  Then we drove around the scenic drive, which was much more pleasant and scenic than the unpaved scenic loop in the western section of the park.  We found a good ice cream shop while driving back across Tucson toward our campground (a welcome treat on a hot day!).

14-15 September:  Nestled in the Chiricahua Mountains in the southeastern corner of Arizona, Chiricahua NM was high on our list of eagerly anticipated places to visit on our homeward route from California.  Hiking friends Dick and Sonia had told us how beautiful it is, and we were not disappointed.  On our way there from Tucson, maps and signboards at the scenic Texas Canyon Rest Area on Interstate 10 gave us some historical perspective of this rugged area known as the last stronghold of the Chiricahua Apache people under their leaders Cochise and Geronimo as they were overwhelmed by the relentless westward invasion of Anglo-American explorers, soldiers, miners, and ranchers into their native homelands.

We settled in on arrival day by taking a short afternoon hike up and back the lower part of the little-used Natural Bridge Trail, which quickly led to good views of impressive boulder and rock formations lining the sides of steep canyons winding up into the mountains.  The Chiricahua Mountains are a “sky island” (isolated mountain range), with elements of four regional ecosystems (Rocky Mountain species, Sonoran Desert species, Sierra Madrean species, and Chihuahuan Desert species).  Superheated ash particles from the Turkey Creek Volcano eruptions 27 million years ago melted together, forming the gray rhyolite rock that weathered during subsequent ages into the intricately eroded rock spires and balanced rocks that these mountains are known for today.

Our main hike in Chiricahua was the next day.  We got an early start and drove up the scenic Bonita Canyon Drive to the Echo Canyon trailhead.  From there we did an 8.8-mile, out-and-back hike to the Heart of Rocks loop, with a spur to Inspiration Point and a side loop through Echo Canyon.  This route led us to some of the most spectacular views in the monument, with minimal elevation gain (we usually don’t reach our summit views as early as 9 am!).  The design and construction of the trails are both superb, owing largely to guest ranch manager, preservation advocate, and master trail builder Edward Murray Riggs (1885-1950).  National Monument status was awarded in 1924 to protect the pinnacles.  A lot of the trail work was accomplished with the help of the CCC in the 1930s.

Our most frequent wildlife sighting (apart from the Mexican jays back in the campground) was small lizards that would dart across the trail as we approached.  These were Yarrow’s spiny lizards, aka mountain spiny lizards, slender and just a few inches long, with a distinct black collar bordered behind by a narrow white ring.  The body scales had a reddish tint to them and the tail had a greenish tint (too quick for us to photograph, though).

An interesting band of rock along the Hailstone Trail looked like white marble-sized stones stuck together.  These are spherulites, once thought to have formed from volcanic ash coalescing around water droplets similar to the way hailstones form.  Recent research, however, has failed to find evidence of ash layers in them.

16-20 September:  North of Silver City, N.Mex., we drove along the scenic but narrow, hilly, and winding Highway 15 over a high pine-forested ridge in Gila National Forest.  This highway was once a wagon road built by the U.S. Calvary to hunt elusive Chiricahua Apache warriors.  Geronimo was born and raised in these mountains near the headwaters of the Gila River.  We camped at Mesa Campground on Lake Roberts, where met Bob and Jean, and visited with them after dark to watch a flyover by the International Space Station and share dessert.  Our objective in this remote area was to see Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument the following day, still farther north on Hwy 15.

For many centuries before the Gila cliff dwellings were constructed, the people of the Gila River headwater region had lived first in pit houses and later in above-ground pueblo style houses.  They shared similar cultural traditions with people across a region that includes parts of present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico.  This region and culture were named by archaeologists Mogollon, after the mountains near its center.  The Mogollon Culture coexisted with but was distinct from Hohokam Culture to its west (as at Casa Grande) and Ancient Puebloan (aka Anasazi) Culture to its north (as at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon).

The cliff dwellings in the monument consist of about 40 rooms built into a set of alcoves and natural caves in the face of a cliff overlooking Cliff Dweller Creek, which flows into the West Fork of the Gila River.  This complex was constructed of rock, mortar, and timbers that were cut from 1276 to 1287, then it was abandoned in the early 1300s.  The Apache appear to have moved into the Gila River area from the north, probably in the 1400s, after it had been abandoned and before Spanish contact.  The ruins of the Gila cliff dwellings were reported after an 1878 prospecting trip, but looters had taken many of the artifacts before the first archaeologist arrived to study the ruins in 1884.  Miners, ranchers, and loggers arrived in increasing numbers after the Apache Wars ended in 1886.  The site was finally protected against additional damage and vandalism when it was proclaimed a National Monument in 1907.  Forester and pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold persuaded the U.S. Forest Service to establish the Gila Wilderness in 1924, the first designated wilderness in the country.  A one-mile loop trail goes up to and through the ruins, with informational signs explaining the history of the ruins and describing the life style of the people who lived there.

In the afternoon, we hiked a while on the Continental Divide Trail, heading south from the Sapillo (“little toad”) Campground trailhead onto the crest of a ridge with fine views and many century plants.

Our next stop in New Mexico was El Morro National Monument.  When we arrived, we fortunately found one unoccupied site at the small, free campground in the monument.  We enjoyed meeting and visiting with Mainers Chuck and Linda, camped in the site next to ours, and hiked with them the next day.  El Morro (“headland” in Spanish) is a steep rocky promontory that was a well-known landmark along a major east-west trail since ancient times, with a pool of water at its base that was an important resource for travelers heading across the desert.  The Zuni people built a multiple-story pueblo large enough to house about 400 people (now known as Atsinna Pueblo) on top of this headland around 1275.  In Spanish colonial times, explorers, soldiers, and priests traveling the route from the Rio Grande to the larger Zuni Pueblo farther west would stop at El Morro on the way.  Some of these travelers began to inscribe their names on the smooth vertical rock at El Morro’s base alongside native petroglyphs carved earlier.  After the U.S. obtained the New Mexico territory following the U.S.-Mexican war of 1846-1848, American army expeditions, railroad survey teams, overland travelers to California, and even a camel caravan began to add their names to “Inscription Rock.”  When railroad service began in 1881 across the Continental Divide 25 miles to the north, the long-distance route past El Morro became obsolete.  In 1906, El Morro became a National Monument, making further carving on the rock illegal.

The hike we took with Chuck and Linda was the two-mile Headland Trail, a loop up onto the top of El Morro, through the ruins of Atsinna pueblo on top, around the top of a beautiful box canyon, and down the other side.  We also walked the half-mile Inscription Rock Trail, that loops close to the carvings and pool.  The visitor center has excellent displays highlighting the history of the successive cultures of the area, as well as some of the artifacts found at the site.

As we started east after one night at a campground near Albuquerque on our way to Texas, Paul’s third cousin Dennis and his wife Lou, whom we had first met on our 2019 trip with Vagabond, gave us a warm send-off when they visited us at our campsite, bringing breakfast burritos and bacon.  It’s nice to have a personal connection to enrich our future visits to the Land of Enchantment!

20-22 September:  Crossing the Panhandle of northern Texas, we camped and hiked in Palo Duro Canyon State Park, a very attractive getaway destination near Amarillo.  Here the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River has eroded a big canyon into the eastern escarpment of the Llano Estacado, the very large and flat plateau of northwest Texas and eastern New Mexico.  The steep canyon walls have exposed colorful sedimentary rock layers formed over many millions of years.

We hiked from the canyon floor up the Rock Garden Trail to the canyon rim, and then along the canyon rim for a while before stopping for lunch at a good outlook and then returning by the same trail, about six miles total.  The hiking was easy, traversing interesting and varied terrain, and not crowded at all.  We learned to recognize mesquite, which are shrubs or small trees of several related species known for their hard wood (palo duro = “hard stick”) and edible seed pods.  Mesquites have feathery-looking leaves, almost fernlike, and long sharp thorns on the branches; enrich the soil by nitrogen fixation; and are very hardy in arid areas.  They are considered to be problematic invasive species in some areas where they have been introduced.

We wondered what animal left the large scat on the trail that was full of seeds of prickly pear cactus (some of them now bearing very ripe fruit).  A few hoof prints that we saw on dusty sections of the trail were not as sharp-pointed as deer or pronghorn tracks and some seemed a bit too large for javelina—were they possibly wild boar or introduced barbary sheep?

For a run in the late afternoon, it seemed appropriate to head out on the Givens, Spicer, Lowry Trail.  Named for avid runners who helped build the park’s trail system, this trail is generally fairly level and it has very nice views.  Wild turkeys are a common sight in the park.  We noticed some of them flying up into the large trees behind our site to roost both nights we camped there.

23 September:  On our way through Oklahoma, we visited the Seminole Nation Museum in Wewoka to learn about the tribe’s history and culture.  By the early 1500s, Non-native diseases and armed conflicts with European settlers began to decimate the indigenous populations in many parts of North America.  Beginning in the early 1700s, remnants of many small tribes moved from a wide area in the future southeastern states (especially Georgia and Alabama) to resettle in northern Florida, where they eventually merged and by the 1770s had become known as Seminoles.  After the American Revolution, pressure from southern states grew for relocating the native tribes to west of the Mississippi River so their former land could be acquired for white settlement.  Most Seminoles refused to emigrate peacefully, resulting in three bloody Seminole Wars in Florida between 1817 and 1858.  During this long period, many of the Seminoles emigrated or were forcibly relocated to what is now eastern Oklahoma, although a small number stayed hidden deep in the swamps of the Everglades and have descendants there today.

Seminoles who were relocated to Indian Territory were settled at first on the Creek Reservation and forced to live under Creek rule.  Adjusting to their new home was difficult.  It wasn’t until 1856 that they were given the right to self-governance and land of their own.  Soon, however, they were involved in another war, with some Seminoles fighting on each side during the American Civil War.  In 1866, a new treaty required Seminole Nation to sell all its land to the U.S., but allowed it to buy a different piece of land from the Creeks.  This forced the Seminoles to relocate again, to what is their home today in Seminole Co., Okla.

Prominent in Seminole culture (and for many other eastern woodland and plains Indian tribes in both Canada and the U.S., from prehistorical times to the present), is the game originally called stickball (now lacrosse).  As witnessed by European travelers as early as the 1600s, stickball often involved whole villages and elaborate ceremonial rituals, lasting a whole day or longer.  Such contests even sometimes functioned as a surrogate for waging war in settling intertribal disputes.  There have been many variations in the rules, and women sometimes participated in this rough and physically demanding sport.

24 September:  We arrived at the remote Shores Lake campground in the Ozarks of Arkansas only to unexpectedly find it closed and padlocked, with no reason or alternative posted.  A friendly and knowledgeable man in a pickup happened by and led us to a convenient alternative camping spot for the night.  He also recommended a hike for the next day.  As we fell asleep peacefully to the familiar sound of katydids, we knew were getting closer to New England.  In the morning drove a few miles farther into the National Forest up to White Rock Mountain Recreation Area at the end of a high and narrow ridge.  We hiked the three-mile Rim Trail, which loops around the top edge of a nearly vertical and continuous cliff, providing several great outlooks.  The excellent stone masonry of the CCC was evident in three cabins, at least three pavilions along the trail, and stone steps on the trail itself.

After this short but rewarding hike, we decided to head farther east in the afternoon, so we could have more time at our next destination.

25-28 September:  We broke up our long drive from central Arkansas to northeastern Tennessee with a night in Natchez Trace State Park.  A lasting memory of that brief stop was spotting a rattlesnake while on a run before supper.  It was tiny, only about 6-7 inches long, and at first looked flat, as though it may have been run over.  The body had dark splotchy bands against a beige background and the head had a dark eye stripe.  When gently touched with a long thin twig, though, the little snake turned its head toward me, opened it mouth wide to show its fangs, and shook the tiny, yellow, noiseless rattle at the end of its tail.  A yellow tail tip is characteristic of juvenile pigmy rattlesnakes.

The next day we stopped in Knoxville to see the gravestones of Alfred and Emma Martine, uncle and aunt to Paul’s great grandmother Lowry, and then we camped about an hour farther north.  Alfred was a civil engineer who lived for a time in Middlesboro, Kentucky, very close to our next destination:  Cumberland Gap.

After arriving at the Cumberland Gap National Historical Site and getting a campsite, we saw the exhibits and video at the visitor center and then went for a bike ride on the Wilderness Road bike path.  This is a pleasant wooded trail headed eastward from a parking lot along the highway, but going westward the path becomes overgrown where it emerges from the woods onto the shoulder of the highway and no longer seems to follow the former railroad bed.

The following day we hiked 8.4 miles exploring the historic Cumberland Gap, which is near the present-day town of the same name.  First, we followed the route blazed by Daniel Boone and others that became the Wilderness Road traveled by many American families seeking new homes west of the Appalachian Mountains in what would later become Kentucky.  This gap was one of the few places suitable for a wagon road to penetrate across the long and steep-sided mountain ridges of this region that had previously been a barrier to trans-Appalachian migration.  About 250,000 settlers crossed the gap into the Ohio River watershed during 1776-1810.   Before 1800, Kentucky and Tennessee became our 15th and 16th states and the Wilderness Road was improved to accommodate wagon traffic.  The importance of the road declined in the 1830s and 1840s, when canals and railroads were built in other areas.  A railroad tunnel was finally completed under Cumberland Gap to Middlesboro in 1889.  The highest point (“saddle”) in the gap had been substantially altered by road building in the 1920s, but it was restored to its original Wilderness Road configuration by the Park Service after motorized traffic was rerouted through a newly constructed highway tunnel in 1996.

From the saddle of the gap, we hiked up to the point where the boundaries of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee meet.  The trail to Tri-State Peak passes through the former site of a Union fortification that was blown up in a huge explosion when it was abandoned in 1862 to prevent leaving any munitions behind for the Confederates.  Returning to the saddle, we hiked up a beautiful woodsy trail to Pinnacle Overlook, high above the gap.  This viewpoint became a popular tourist attraction when the Skyland Highway was built to it in 1929.

Beyond Pinnacle Overlook, we saw only two other hikers all the way back to the campground.  Ridge Trail followed the long crest of a ridge, generally following the Kentucky-Virginia boundary through a pleasant hardwood forest.  On the ground there were lots of hickory nuts that were oval with a round cross-section, not quite an inch long, with a very thin husk (bitternut hickory?).  Lewis Hollow Trail took us downhill from the ridge crest to the campground.  We enjoyed visiting with Elliot and Katherine from North Carolina, camped two sites from us in an Ascape camper.  They were among the relatively few hikers we met on the trail all day.

29 September:  The Backbone Rock Recreation Area, in Tennessee’s Cherokee National Forest, has a small campground, a picnic area, and short hiking trails for exploring this interesting feature.  Backbone Rock is a “spur fin” jutting out from the lower slope of Holston Mountain toward Beaverdam Creek.  It forms a wall of solid rock with vertical sides, much taller than it is thick.  A hiking trail climbs up one side of it, along the narrow and flat top, and down the other side.  The trail and some of the structures in the picnic area were built by the CCC, which is evident from the attractive and well-built stone steps in the steep sections of the trail.  There is a small loop trail under hemlocks and rhododendrons nearby that passes by Backbone Falls in a small tributary stream feeding into Beaverdam Creek.  There is also a trail branching off from the Backbone Rock Trail to ascend Holston Mountain to a junction with the Appalachian Trail.

In addition to the natural beauty of Backbone Rock, it is also interesting for the tunnel that was blasted and drilled through it in 1901 to provide railroad access for mining and lumbering south of Damascus, Va.  Manganese ore, iron ore, and timber were transported from Crandull and Shady Valley down the Beaverdam Creek valley to Damascus.  After those resources had been exhausted, this area became part of the national forest and the former rail corridor was converted to the auto road that uses the tunnel today.  This tunnel is said to be the shortest tunnel in the world.

30 September-4 October:  Our last objective on our way home was to camp and hike in Shenandoah NP.  This wasn’t far from the home of Paul’s second cousin Cindy and her husband Paul in Charlottesville, Va., providing a good excuse for an overnight visit with them.  Growing up, we would often see each other on summer visits to our grandmothers’ adjacent summer houses on Cape Cod.  Some fifty years later, we are grandparents, so we enjoyed showing pictures and talking about our own grandchildren, and also reminiscing about some of our travels over the past decades.

After arriving at our campground in Shenandoah in mid-afternoon, we went for a hike on Bearfence Mountain.  The clockwise loop we took ascended a ridge, followed the ridge crest over the “Rock Scramble,” passed a couple of very good outlooks, then reached a junction with the Appalachian Trail, which descended gently to the trailhead parallel to but downslope of the ridge crest.  The Rock Scramble section threaded among rough and angular pieces of metamorphosed volcanic rock that were jumbled together, with thin edges projecting upward and sloping faces, making for challenging footing and slow progress.  We were rewarded amply, though, by the great views from the top and the easy second half of our loop.

The next morning, we hiked around a counter clockwise loop on the park’s highest peak, Hawksbill Mountain.  At the top was a fine viewing platform with plenty of space not to feel crowded, even on this fine sunny Saturday.  Many of the hikers had made shorter climbs to the summit as out-and-back hikes rather than the loop we did, but our route was only three miles, not very steep, and we thought the Salamander Trail (which was not part of the shorter climbs) was a very pleasant path.  Noticeable along the trail were the fruits of mountain ash and witch hazel.  After hiking, we had plenty of time to relax at our campsite and enjoy some of the early fall color.

When we left Shenandoah, we were only a two-day drive from home.  On our last camping night, in central New York, we were subjected to the first rain since our first day out, two and a half months before.

It was a great trip, but it was also good to get back home before freezing temperatures set in.  This trip was definitely more biased toward family visits than our earlier long trips were.  Spending quality time with our little granddaughters was priceless, though, and they will all too soon be more absorbed in a lot more than just having fun with grandparents.

We did notice that our hikes and bike rides weren’t usually as long as on previous trips—is it just because we are getting older, or was it that the heat in the Southwest was warmer this year than normal?  We managed to meet some nice people along the way, and see several beautiful and interesting places, too.  The scenery in Chiricahua probably impressed us the most, but each state has no shortage of special places to explore.