City of Rocks State Park and Chiricahua Natl. Monument
Feb. 2022
We were able to wander all around these rocks. Something cool to see around every new vantage point. A kid’s (and adult’s) playground! We spent hours exploring.
We’ve been to a lot of state parks, but City of Rocks in New Mexico has to be one of the coolest! If we had had a smaller rig and chosen to boondock, or had camped in a tent, we could have been parked right among the rocks. Our site still had a good view of the rocks, though.
A great tent site was nestled between these rocks.
Such a cool tent site!
This is yet another spot out west which feels like it’s out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not really that far from a town. Isolated enough, though, that it’s wonderfully quiet. No internet out here!
We give this state park two thumbs up!
We walked up a hill so we could look out over the whole area. The sites with electric and water hookups are where all the RV’s are parked in front of the rocks.
This primitive campground has sites nestled among the rocks, but it’s farther removed from the larger main section of rocks. The night sky would be fabulous! It was too cold for us to sit comfortably outside at night, unfortunately.
It was too early in the season so there wasn’t much to see in the garden, but it was a nice, easy walk.
The setting sun gave the rocks an orange glow!
From here, we travelled west to stay at a KOA in Willcox, AZ, in order to visit Chiricahua National Monument. The first evening there, we saw what had to have been one of the most stunning sunsets we have ever seen. Craig said it looked like a volcano erupting, because the color was deep red, with a yellow-orange glow above the mountain.
The next day, we drove to Chiricahua NM. It’s pronounced “Cheer-i-COW-ah”, and is named after the Chiricahua Apache tribe. We decided to hike part of the moderate Echo Canyon Loop Trail past the Grottoes. We did not hike the whole thing, because it was chilly, and the wind got super strong, especially at the open overlooks on the trail. It was a good trail, though, because we were able to not only see whole hillsides covered in rock pinnacles, but also were able to walk right among some of the pinnacles for a close-up view.
I was cold! That wind was crazy!
Then we drove to Massai Point, the main overlook. We walked down the trail from the parking lot to see the vista, but it was so windy, that we didn’t stay there long, and we had to eat our picnic lunch inside the car. Right before we left Massai Point, we saw two birds we hadn’t seen before: the Mexican jay, and the spotted towhee. They were both right next to our car! I had put my camera away, so I had to take not-so-good pictures with my phone.
On the way back down the scenic drive, we stopped at Organ Pipe Formation:
When we were initially planning our travels, we had thought that after wintering in Texas, we would head back west to see more of the Pacific states before venturing into Canada. But, we changed our minds and decided to spend the majority of 2022 in the eastern half of the country instead. I had already made reservations at City of Rocks and the Chiricahua area, and we didn’t want to cancel our plans. The upshot of all this was, after visiting southeast Arizona, we doubled back on a long drive through New Mexico and south Texas towards the southeastern U.S. and springtime.