Coronado National Memorial

We're mostly revisiting our favorite old haunts, but today we went somewhere we've never been before.  The Coronado National Memorial commemorates the Coronado Expedition sent up from Mexico to investigate rumoured giant cities full of gold andà treasure.  Instead they found small pueblos and villages of grass huts.  Still, some made it all the way to Kansas, others got stopped by the Grand Canyon.

The attractive visitor centre was built to resemble the Spanish settlers' style of building with fired Adobe bricks and ceramic tile roofs,  The locals used unfired adobe.

We hiked up the Joe's Canyon Trail.  Later we found out there's a shuttle taking you up to the summit at Montezuma Pass (Montezuma has a lot of things named after him in the US that he had nothing to do with) and you can hike back down to the visitor centre.  Nevertheless, we were up to the task, and had the the trail to ourselves till almost the end of our hike.

It was a fabulous hike, my favorite so far, and very civilized.  We climbed up the canyon on easily graded switchbacks, a big plus for us older folks. 

The views, fantastic, the birds, not so active.  Although we saw a lot of spotted towhees, possibly the highest concentration of spotted towhees in the world. No successful photos though; too much lurking in the underbrush.

Leo spotted some hedgehog cacti growing in the rocks.

Eventually we reached the saddle where we had a simultaneous view of Arizona on one side and Mexico on the other.

I tried to take a panoramic shot of both sides but my camera failed me.

Arizona on the left, imagine Mexico on the right.  Looks pretty much the same, but with sombreros.

The yuccas in the grass looked very painterly.

From there we walked up along the ridge to the trailhead at Montezuma Pass. 

After lunch we walked back down by the road.  There wasn't much traffic. 

Even the roadside looks like botanical garden.

We joked that we should have just stayed around the visitor centre, we saw more birds there than we had all morning.

A nuthatch:

The Arizona woodpecker:

Bird of the Day

Lastly we took a short hike to an abandoned ranch with an extremely creaky windmill.  Reminded me of some depressing western with Clint Eastwood in it.

We were looking for sparrows, but it was too late in the day.