Welcome to the Land of the Standing Up Rocks, aka the Chiricahua National Monument, a collection of standing stones worn by wind and weather into weird and wonderful shapes.

Those mountains in the distance are the Dragoon Mountains, where the Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise’s Stronghold is. He died there and his people rode their horses back and forth over his grave so he would never be found. And he never was.

I took this photo on Massai Point in the Chiricahua Mountains, which is one of the many ranges large and small protruding up to six thousand feet out of the floor of the desert Southwest. They are called “sky islands” because of their unique ecosystems, a beautiful name for a gloriously beautiful landscape.

We saw snow on distant peaks as we came up over Apache Pass from Fort Bowie (I thought a lot about tires during that part of the drive), and it turns out those snowy surfaces are part of the inner surface of the caldera left after the volcanic eruption that created the range.

And everything else that remains behind to awe and delight.

Yep, you drive right beneath a bunch of those.

Some have names, but most don’t. There are just too many of them.

Like this one, which should be named Car Squisher. Because it will one day.

We saw pronghorn antelope and a red-tailed hawk but what we really wanted to see was a coati. Next time!

Chatter Random Saturday Chiricahua National Monument NPS