Fort Bowie National Historic Site – June 2020

Another day trip! Feels so good to be out and about. The target of this trip was Fort Bowie National Historic Site, ruins of the Army fort that existed for 20+ years in the late 1800s. First stops included birding at the Benson sewage ponds (birders go to all the best places!) and the Twin Lakes Golf Course in Willcox. Then it was onto Fort Bowie, on probably the hottest day of the year. From the trailhead it’s a 1.5 mile hike to the ruins of the fort, with interpretive signs along the way. The visitors’ center was closed, but we were able to refill bottles there, and relax on their porch with our picnic lunch.

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Chiricahua National Monument – June 2020

2020 has been a challenging year so far. We did enjoy a wonderful trip to Chile and Argentina in January, but then COVID-19 upended everyone’s existence. Planned trips to Portugal and Spain (April) and Colombia (June) were rescheduled to 2021, and staying home became the norm. And while we’re luckier than most, in that we live in a rural area and it’s easy to enjoy outdoor activities such as biking and hiking while social distancing, by June we were getting pretty antsy and just wanting to go *somewhere*. So, off we drove to the Chiricahua National Monument, a couple of hours away, on a much-needed day trip. Somehow, going to a national park just says “vacation”!

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Arizona and Utah Parks – Oct 2019

October we were on the road, once again with Brooklyn friends Mark and Joanne Guralnick, for more national and state parks, national monuments, etc. The main goal on this trip was to get to three in southern Utah that have long been on the bucket list, and somehow we’d never gotten there: Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands. But as always seems to happen on a driving trip, we tried to cram as many other locations in as we could! And we did much better on this trip understanding the geology along the way.

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More Southwest Parks – Oct 2016

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Bryce Canyon National Park

This driving trip of the southwest started out as a planned visit to Las Vegas NV for the Conservation Lands Foundation’s Friends Grassroots Network Rendezvous (big name for a gathering of conservation minded folks; we were there representing the Friends of the San Pedro River). It soon turned into a chance to see more national parks and monuments in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah – not to mention visiting cousins Bob and Pam Deichmeister in Prescott, AZ.

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Arizona & Utah National Parks – Sept 2016

In September 2016 we embarked on a week-long driving tour of northern Arizona and southern Utah, joined by our friends Mark & Joanne Guralnick from Brooklyn, NY. While Liza and Joanne worked out all the accommodations, Robert was the daily trip planner (with the help of Arizona Highways and Highroads magazines), with a focus on national parks and monuments. There were some obvious goals – the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Petrified Forest & Painted Desert. But I have to say, we went to other national monuments that I’d never even heard of! What a great variety of parks, monuments, memorials, etc. we support!

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Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim – Oct 2010

In October we joined a group of friends on a Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike organized by Karen Rieffer of Sierra Vista.  The route had us descending from the north rim on the North Kaibab trail, staying two nights down at Phantom Ranch, then ascending to the south rim on the South Kaibab trail.  Others in the group took the Bright Angel trail up to the south rim, about 3 miles longer, but had drinking water en route which South Kaibab did not.

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