Rainy Road trip in Cochise County

Our stop in Texas Canyon was short and sweet, but bitter cold! We just stopped at the rest stop along Interstate 10 Eastbound and found a letterbox. I’m not sure what else there is to do here, but the rocks made for an interesting and scenic stop.

 Again, we only made brief stops for letterboxes. We could only take so much bitter cold at a time, so short drive-by boxes were perfect for today. It might have been windy, rainy, and cold, but at least the clouds were amazing!

 If you go to Arizona and only drive on interstates, you are seriously missing out on the beauty of the back highways. I learned today that one of Cochise County’s distinguishing features is the tall yellow grass all around. It made for rich, warmer hues in contrast with the dark sky.

Willcox, AZ

We had an interesting stop at the Wilcox Playa. After searching for the letterbox, we met some hunters in the parking lot. They were very excited about the cranes they had taken down. I wasn’t quite emotionally prepared for them to show me their cranes though…

We also stopped at a small roadside cemetery. We were having good luck finding letterboxes so far!

 Dos Cabezas, AZ

We had really been hoping that things would improve weatherwise before we arrived at Chiricahua, but it seemed to get more and more cloudy. At least it made the scenery more and more epic! It was also amazing how empty all these highway roads were.

Chiricahua National Monument

 Sadly our time was short in the park, but here are the pictures I did get of driving in and walking through the visitor’s center. We will be back someday, I can assure you.

Red Bark on a dogwood tree

Gravesite of Johnny Ringo

 Thanks to our friend Mitchell, we have become very familiar with Southwestern films such as Tombstone. He had planted a box near Johnny Ringo’s gravesite, so we had to stop here.

On our way home, we stopped at Texas Canyon again for a letterbox at the Westbound rest stop. It was even more cloudy than before. While we had enjoyed our interesting rainy road trip in Cochise County, we were ready for a warm night at home!