Nov 16 - 18 City of Rocks and Kartchner Caverns State Park

Nov 16
Last post we had just got set up at City of Rocks with great sites. We walked around the whole park to see all the different sites. Most sites are boondocking with some are right in the rocks. We are all anxious to get out on the trails and see more of this spectacular place. We decided to do the longest hike first which will take us to the top of Table Top Mountain.

Trail winds it's way to the peak top right.

These stone signs are at the trail intersections.

We combined the Hydra & Table Top trails to get up top.

The trails here are well maintained sand, gravel/rock mix. We brought Margaret with us and I know she'll be riding in the pack for some of it. It's too long for her these days. We all have water and snacks and are ready to go.

We'll be going up the peak behind me.

The elevation gain is not huge at about 600 feet over a couple miles. Leslie is watching for the steep slopes that freak her out but this trail is not that bad. The Hydra trail was very nice and easy and then you go through a fence and hit the narrow Table Top trail that winds it's way up. 

Nope not going straight up, we turn left and go around.

Steve is feeling strong so far! lol

The tree.  It was out there all alone ?

Just as we thought, a little over 2 miles in and she's riding, half asleep.

It's a great hike with a continuous gentle uphill slope on a beautiful day. Altitude is about 5500 feet here so we took a few breaks and didn't try to push it. Lots of picture stops and the views are so cool.

Not many pictures of Les, she usually takes them.

Leslie, Steve & Dianne in a shady spot.

The view from above the V notch in the previous pic. If you zoom in you can see just how cool the City of Rocks really is. Les thinks it looks like Bedrock from the Flintstones.

The last part of the trail gets much steeper and has more large rocks to step on and over. Les found part of it a little close to the drop off but she is getting way better at just focusing on the trail and keep moving. Proud of her for not giving in and pushing on. The reward is worth it. We soon found our way to the bench at the top and a fantastic overlook of the City of Rocks. 

The view from the top. Yay!

Incredible to see all these boulders in the middle of this valley.

View off the back side to the east.

After a good rest and some water/snacks we took the same path back down. Of course it was much quicker coming down and soon we were back at the park.

Leslie pointing to where we were.

Our total hike was about 8km/ 5 miles so when we got back we just relaxed for a bit and did some blog stuff until happy hour. Supper was at our house tonight and we pooled our resources for a fantastic barbecue steak and baked potato supper. Add in a salad and some mushrooms for the steak and it was like going out to the Keg without the drive! Great day!

Nov 17

Today we are going to learn more about this place. We all walked down to the visitor center to watch a VHS !! video of the forming of the rocks and some general info about the park. That tape has been played lots, pretty grainy and shaky at first. It got better as it played and did a nice job of explaining how the rocks formed.

Yeah.... like that :)

Makes more sense now how they are in the middle of nowhere.

So now that we know more about how they got here we decided to do a walk amongst all the different rocks. You can spend hours walking through and over and around all these huge boulders. Like a big ol' playground for all ages. We wandered around in the rocks for almost 2 hours and had a blast. Dianne even did some geocaching in the rocks. We found what they were talking about.

Thought the tree seemed out of place?

This rock propped up on the smaller rocks.

Leslie always came back to admire this rock, what's so special ?? Lol

We got our fill of playing in the rocks and walked around the edge of the park to see the desert gardens they had. Small garden but had little signs identifying different plants and trees. We got together again for happy hour and did some more forward planning. We have reservations at Kartchner Caverns State Park next and then a park Steve & Dianne know about, Gilbert Ray Park, a little west of Tucson. After that we just relaxed for the evening and did part of our packing up to move. We all agreed that if we didn't have reservations at Kartchner we would stay longer here. It's that great! That's okay though, I bet there will be something just as cool over the next hill. That's how it has been so far and I'm sure it will continue. Hey, we're retired, we're warm and having way too much fun with good friends. Life is pretty damn good :)

Nov 18

The weather forecast says it is time to get to a lower elevation. It is getting to freezing overnight (oh my!) and it will be warmer closer to Tucson at lower elevation. We'll drop to about 3000 feet from 5000 feet. Makes a big difference weather wise. We got packed up and ready to roll by 10:00.

Hooked up and ready to roll.

Steve and Dianne ready at their site.

First stop is in Deming at the truck center to fuel up and dump our holding tanks, about 23 miles. With that taken care of we got back on I10 heading west on yet another beautiful day! It's not a long drive and we will of course cross into Arizona from New Mexico. We've seen lots of great things in New Mexico and most of the people we met were super friendly. 
Something we have never seen for signs on the highway is dust warnings. If Canada has them I have never seen them but in southeast Arizona there are several.

There are a few sets of these that we passed but we haven't been in a bad dust storm yet. Probably a good thing I imagine. We're in Arizona and that's a hazard here. Haven't seen any snowplow warnings ;)

Arizona, we'll be here for a couple months.

Most of the drive was flat and desert terrain and then outside of Tucson we get another boulder field. We called it another City of Rocks even though it isn't really. It was a dramatic change for a few miles and then back to cactus and sand.

Looks similar we think, more volcanic push.

We took the exit from I10 to head south to Kartchner Caverns State Park. We have reserved sites close together and we'll be here for a few days. We'll get to see the caves and Dianne & Steve are working on blog posts because they have already seen them. Looks like some nice trails for us to hike here as well. Nice.

Home for a few days.

We stopped at the gate and got our pass etc then drove to the camp loops. Steve & Dianne had got ahead of us so we couldn't see their rig. Les & I ended up doing a tour around the loops looking for #39?? The sign wasn't clear about what was down our row but we got it figured out and got backed in to our site. We all got set up and I even took the bikes off the rack so we can ride around the park. We had happy hour at Steve & Dianne's and then back to our rig for the evening. I'll post this and tell you more about Kartchner in the next one. Trying to get caught up, stay tuned.