We left the casino early this morning and drove a couple hours East to Chiricahua National Monument. When we arrived, we found out that we the road to Fort Bowie NHS is passable with an RV. We had attempted to visit both Chiricahua and Fort Bowie during our four-week trip in the summer of 2011, but the area was aflame with what would later become known as the Horseshoe 2 fire.
We arrived at the trailhead without incident:
It’s a 1.5 mile walk to the fort and visitor center. I think this is the only NPS site I’ve been to that has a hike-only access to the visitor center:
In the distance, we could see the remains of the fort. I tried to imagine the relief felt by survivors of Apache raids when they realized they were going to make it to the safety of the fort:
After the kids received their Junior Ranger badges at the visitor center from Ranger Ross, we walked the ruins. Many of the building were made of low-grade adobe, now stabilized by an overcoating of plaster by the Park Service:
It was neat to find artifacts and know that they were from the 1860s, contemporaries of President Lincoln:
We stopped in at the cemetery on the hike back to the RV:
The sunset was amazing:
We drove down from Fort Bowie’s trailhead parking about a mile to overnight on BLM land with decent 4G service. See the trip map for details. Tomorrow we will head back to Chiricahua.