BootsnAll Travel Network



Arizona Bound

April 19th

Since we were awake so early in the morning after our night in White Sands, we had time to visit a few things in the area before driving to Bisbee, Arizona. Just up the road was the White Sands Missile Range which had a museum and missile garden open to the public. We parked on the outside of the security gate and walked in to avoid having our car searched-not that we’re carrying anything illegal, but it’s a lot of stuff to search! There was a big exhibit about the V2 missile, a German-designed missile that was used during World War II. The Americans brought over a lot of these V2s after the war along with the German scientists who designed them- launching our own missile program that would in turn take man in to outer space.

We picked up the I-10 towards Arizona. My husband is always looking for better routes than the one proposed by the GPS so he chose a road that would cut across the mountains and give us a chance to stop in Chiricahua National Monument on our way to Bisbee, an old mining town. Of course the other alternative was a paved road, but this one was a more direct route and should save us on gas, if not on time. Within about 5 minutes of turning off the I-10, we were on a small dirt road surrounding by grazing land for cattle. It was relatively smooth and apparently intersected with another (more developed road?) in Paradise. Just the opportunity to visit Paradise was worth the first 30 miles of dirt road. Of course upon leaving the town of Paradise (population around 20), we picked up another narrow mountain dirt road that winded its way up through the forest about 30 miles before rejoining the road to Chiricahua. We came around a turn to find a van and about 10 people stopped in the middle of the road. When we got out to see what was going on, we were surprised to see that they had picked up a Gopher snake that was in the middle of the road. Cool find, I’m not sure that Fab or I would have had the idea to pick it up on our own.

After about 2 ½ hours on our shortcut road, we finally got to Chiricahua National Monument in time for a second surprise of the day. Arizona (though in the Mountain Time zone, doesn’t follow Daylight Savings time, so it was in fact an hour earlier than we expected. Luckily, there was a campground at the park, so we abandoned our plans to stay in Bisbee (another 2 hour drive) and camped there in a very peaceful and scenic campground.



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