Amerind Museum; Chiricahua National Monument

After a night of thunder, lightning and rain, it seemed, when we headed out this morning, that everywhere was greener. Our destination today was Dragoon, in Cochise County, where the Amerind Museum is situated. The Amerind Museum was established in 1937 to foster and promote knowledge and understanding of the native peoples of the Americas through research, education and conservation. It was founded by William Shirley Fulton, an archaeologist.

Views en route.

There was no photography allowed in the museum or art gallery but the exhibits were very interesting. In the main gallery there is a fantastic basket (it's huge) found in 1910 by a 10 year old boy in southeast Arizona near the Mexican border. They don't know for sure but they think it was made by a Chiricahuan Apache. The exhibits gave me a better understanding of the various native peoples in Southwestern USA.

The art gallery had an interesting exhibit of digitally enhanced native grasses.


The docent (volunteer guide / receptionist) was a lovely woman, very enthusiastic about this area. She recommended that we go to Chiricahua National Monument to see the rock formations there. It was another 40 miles away and was going to increase our return journey to 3 hours. No problem to Jim and we both thought it was worth the journey.

It's a wonderland of rocks! An 8 mile corkscrew paved road winds upward to Masai Point where the view is fantastic and where the rocks have a similarity to the Giant's Causeway. There are large expanses of volcanic rocks eroded into pinnacles, columns and spires and in places it seems as if rocks are balanced on rocks in the most precarious way.

                        A lovely bird - only one of the masses of bird and wildlife that abound here.

                                                              Sugar Loaf - not in Wicklow!

These are called Organ Pipes.

                                                                      A young deer!

Another deer. We also saw the ubiquitous grey squirrel.

These last 2 were on our way home at the very scenic area between Wilcox and Benson called Texas Canyon.












We had a serious "Jesus Jim" moment (or series of moments!) when Jim took a left turn a jhunction too earely and end up facing a one-way street about to go tghe wrong way on it. When he righted himself he was now on the left of the dual-carriageway (they drive on the right here you know!) with no way of getting to the right. The cars coming towards us just drove round us with a few "polite" beeps as we inched our way towards the correct left turn and back to the right side of the road. Wheee - what a sigh of relief!!