You see, back in the day, say, twenty-seven million years ago, give or take a millennium, this area erupted at what we now call the Turkey Creek Caldera. She was a doozy - a thousand times greater than Mount St. Helen's - and she laid the foundation for the marvels we will see today. Two thousand feet of ash and pumice fused into rhyolitic tuff. Over the eons, this stuff eroded into something similar to Bryce Canyon, only it's not red sandstone.
Not only is the scenery fantastic (you ain't see nothin' yet!), but this 18-square-mile Monument is the intersection of the "Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, the southern Rocky Mountains and the northern Sierra Madre in Mexico. Chiricahua plants and animals represent one of the premier areas for biological diversity in the northern hemisphere." Things are getting very interesting!
My mercy! How will I ever decide which photos to share with you !?! We are positive that this is the largest collection - almost unending - of balancing rocks we've ever seen.
It is only an 8 mile road to the top, but the photo ops cause us to take forever to get there. Environments like this have been dubbed "Islands in the Sky" because they are so unlike the surrounding basins, dubbed "Grassland Seas." (Can't have an island without a sea, eh?)
Each curve brings more fantastic views, but the very best are at the top.
We are almost at the very top of this National Monument. In the distance you see what we will discover later on: Cochise's Stronghold! These rhyolite hoodoos put me in mind of the Terra Cotta Army - those clay figures unearthed in China a few years ago.
But there is much, much more to see here...
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