Hiking at Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona! (The Big Loop & Sugarloaf Mountain)

We've made it to Arizona and we have a handful of adventures planned here over the next few weeks and first up we're in southeast Arizona at the Chiricahua National Monument. This national monument is located in the Chiricahua Mountains and was home to the Chiricahua Apaches who called this area the land of standing up rocks. This park is home to some very unique scenery and we're starting our day here by hiking the Big Loop which is an 8.7 mile trail that takes you to some of the park's best scenery in one big loop. The most notable feature of the park are these rhyolite rock pinnacles. Over 27 million years ago a volcanic eruption left behind pumice and ash over 2,000 feet high. The ash and pumice fused together to create a rock called rhyolitic tuff and over time it weathered into what you see today. This trail is such a blast so far. Basically in like a slot canyon right now. There are rocks just balanced on each other all over the place, views around every single corner, always something interesting to look at. Wow. That was cool. So the Chiricahua Mountains are one of southern Arizona's sky islands so if you think of the desert as a flat sea these mountain ranges poke up out of the desert kind of like islands on the sea and so they're at a higher elevation and so you'll see different flora and fauna and it also provides a different environment for other animals that you wouldn't normally see in the desert. This trail has a little bit of everything. You get to go above, below, and in between all the rock pinnacles. We have the desert off in the distance. We walk through a forest for a while and right over there are snowy mountains. There's basically any type of scenery you could want on this hike. It has been such a fun and unique trail but man I'm so exhausted. I think we're at like 6,000 something feet of elevation and I'm not used to hiking in general. It's been a couple months and hiking at this elevation so I'm pretty pooped. There's a lot of up and down but it's very beautiful. I'm so tired. Man down, man down. We just made a quick lunch in the van and before we left Texas we made sure to stock up on some goodies at H-E-B, the best grocery store in the world. If you know you know. We got this cilantro lime cream sauce. We've never had it before but it looked good, looked easy for the van and we put it with some chicken. We cooked chicken with it and then we have some rice, some avocado, some cilantro. It smells good. It has like white wine in it so it has kind of a unique smell. We'll see how it tastes. Mmm creamy sauce with rice is just one of the best combinations ever. Oh man that is really good. It's really creamy, got a little bit of a tang to it. Oh man I'm gonna go to town on this. So you may have noticed that Kona wasn't on the hike with us this morning and that's because dogs aren't allowed on most trails here in the park but we just drove up to the front of the park to a spot called Faraway Ranch where she is allowed to take her on a little walk and check it out. While the Chiricahua Apaches explored this area for many many years others didn't know about it until much later including two Swedish immigrants named Neil and Emma Erickson who established their homestead in Bonita Creek in 1887 now known as Faraway Ranch and in 1917 they had to relocate and their children including their daughter Lillian continued to manage the property and eventually branched out into having guest rooms, guided horse rides, and trail tours. Lillian and her husband Ed Riggs created the first trails in the area and began to promote the place as a wonderland of rocks. They were instrumental in getting the area established as a national monument in 1924. The ranch was acquired by the National Park Service in 1979 and several buildings have been restored to their early 20th century appearance. Normally you can take a tour and go in and see all the insides but unfortunately right now it is under renovation and so you can only see it from the outside. We have two hours until sunset and we have two more spots we want to check out and the first is Sugarloaf Mountain which is a 1.8 mile hike taking us to the top of that. Check it out! When the CCC was building this trail in the 30s they had to carve out this tunnel to make their way up there. Alright we made it to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain and up here there is a fire lookout that was built in the 1930s. I read online this is mainly used in the summer to monitor lightning off in the distance but as you can imagine you have panoramic views all around. Gorgeous up here. Not sure if you can see off in the distance but the mountain with the snow there is the caldera of the Turkey Creek volcano eruption. The one I mentioned earlier in the video that happened 27 million years ago. That volcanic eruption was a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St. Helens eruption that happened in 1980. A thousand times holy cow. We have hiked to quite a few fire lookouts in the U.S. and we always love getting to see how different they are from each other and all the views that you get to have from them. It's really cool to envision the people that get to stay up here and have this as their home for the night and you can stay the night in some fire lookouts around the U.S. and that is a goal of mine to make that happen someday. For our final stop of the day we're at Masai Point which is the last stop on the road in the park and they have this stone overlook that overlooks all of the amazing rocks and the mountains off in the distance and one thing that we think is super neat is they have this, Adam told me it's not a telescope but I'm not really sure what to call it, but you look in the hole but you can move it and it'll tell you right here what you're looking at. So I believe this one right here looks off to Saguaro National Park near Tucson. That's crazy. This park reminded us so much of Bryce Canyon National Park but instead of the orange hoodies you have all of these tan rock pillars and way less people. The national parks get all the hype and for good reason but don't sleep on the state parks, national forests, and national monuments. They have so much to offer as well and we just had a great time here. It rocked! Get it? Good one. I just realized I've had my pants on backwards the whole day. I was like these just don't feel like they're supposed to. We actually cut out, we did half-calf today and I'm blaming it on that. Half the caffeine, half the brain function. I don't know why I just went... Why'd I do that?