“Babe, there’s something wretched about this / Something so precious about this / Oh what a sin” – Hozier
Another day, another NPS site visit! Today we hit the Coronado National Memorial which sits on the north side of the Arizona / Mexico border. We’d be planning on a quick visit to Coronado Cave and Coronado Peak, but after stopping at the ranger station we slightly amended our plan. We began by driving most of the way up Coronado Peak, then hiking the lesuirly 300 or so feet to the summit. Then, rather than piling back into Fred as planned, we hiked a couple miles down to the base of the mountain and, more notably, monument number 102 on the US/Mexico border.
Molly told me that her post was going to get political, so mine won’t. I will add that it would be a shame to ruin this BIG BEAUTIFUL view with an ugly ass wall.
It was a beautiful hike down the mountain with views of Mexico the entire way. It was also cool, topping out around 80. The hike back up was a bit tougher, but after Ellie took the lead we stormed up with very few stops. Coronado peak, hiked in reverse, was pretty much a cake-walk compared with Guadalupe Peak. There was also plenty of wildlife: lily-like flowers, cactuses in full-bloom, bright red bugs that we later learned were used to make dye, and what I assume must have been an Africanized Bee that we quickly moved away from.
From Coronado we headed north to Tuscon where we’ll be for the next three days. As the only city on our itinerary with an In-n-Out we had to make that our first stop. Delicious. Please come to Chicago! Now the girls are swimming, Molly and I are writing and enjoying Embassy Suites 2.5 hour long wine hour (Kimpton take note!). Tomorrow we were planning to climb Wasson Peak, but with the high temp projected to be 110 I think we’ll be looking for an alternative.
