Today was an easy drive of just 114.9 miles (97,265.6 total) west along I-10 to Bowie, AZ. The landscape certainly changed from the flat wide open spaces we found in western Texas.
It seemed like there was nearly a continuous flow of trains headed east with an endless number of cargo containers. Just imagine if every one of those were instead being driven individually down the highway.
When we settled into Mountain View RV Park in Bowie I could easily see the same railroad track only a couple hundred yards away. I thought it was going to be terribly loud every time a train passed (and I already knew they passed by pretty often) but maybe there were fewer trains at night and they were passing through Bowie slowly so we never had any issue with the noise.
I don't think I ever took a picture of Mount Graham, the beautiful snow capped namesake of the park. I could see there was an observatory near the peak. Joani found it was the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope. It's manned by Jesuit astronomers but it was closed to visitors from November through mid-May. I'm sure the roads were closed due to the snow so a visit will just have to be another time.
What we did try to see was Fort Bowie. It was only 14 miles away so it seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, the paved road suddenly ended about a mile before we reached the Fort Bowie "Trailhead". We continued, slowly, and surely enough we reached the trailhead. Fort Bowie was a 1.5 mile hike from the parking area. Sam was allowed on the trail on a leash but he was not up for a 3 mile round trip hike and I couldn't carry him that far and it was too hot to leave him in the car so we didn't get to see Fort Bowie National Historic Site. Most troubling, however, was this road was our planned route to visit Chiricahua National Monument tomorrow so we headed home to contemplate our options.
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