The Secrets of Southeast Arizona

I raised my children in East Texas and almost every year we would take a trip to California and Oregon to see our relatives. Many times we would drive I-10 through SE Arizona and we would always stop at this rocky rest stop near Benson Arizona so the kids could get out of the car and climb rocks. I really never paid much attention to it's name or the area around it because the area seemed so barren, so desert, so nothing, except for for those rocks that I would later learn to be Texas Canyon.

Now years have passed and I find myself living in that "barren" land called SE Arizona and what I found was, yes, where I-10 goes through Arizona it is lifeless and dull. However if you go just a few miles any direction off the freeway you will find that the area is anything but lifeless or dull! I have now lived in the area for 2 years and pass by Texas Canyon at least twice a week. I even look at Texas Canyon differently, because the Canyon has at least two arches! It takes a keen eye but the largest arch can be seen from the freeway. I just wished I could find the picture I took of it. I have; however, found this picture of a much smaller arch in Texas Canyon.

So now let's look off the freeway 11 miles East of Wilcox in one of the most barren stretches of Arizona. It is this one off the ramp that simply says Hwy 191 Safford. The large lonely stretch of divided highway only goes North and seems to go nowhere! Why put in a 4 lane divided highway to nowhere? Not only that, but hwy 191 used to be called hwy 666 and there are many stories about this lonely highway. OK, so you head North to these medium sized towns down in the Gila Valley called Safford/Thatcher. Here you have such staples as a Walmart, Safeway, Home Depot and a sizable college called Eastern Arizona College or EAC for short. So now your some 36 miles off the freeway and you realize this is a sizable town in a farming valley complete with a year round flowing river. However, it's whats surrounding the valley that I really enjoy. First of all I want to say from the I-10 freeway you can see this giant mountain with what looks like a drive-in movie screen on top. Well this mountain with a "movie screen" towers above Safford/Thacher making a beautiful backdrop to the towns. The 10,720' mountain commonly called Mt Graham  is a beautiful summer hide-a-way for the locals, but most everyone else just drives by the mountain on the freeway not knowing about it's forest, caves, lake, trails, springs, meadows, and the world's largest optical binocular telescope, yep that's that movie screen in the sky.

Here is a link to a video about Mt Graham,the tours of the observatories and the museum below the mountain.....Discoveries in the Shadow of Mt Graham .

Besides the beauty of Mt Graham there's the slot Canyons at Clifton, The awesome beauty at Bonita Creek, explore beautiful Klondike, the cliff-side ruins in 4 mile canyon, the hoo-doos  of the Chiricahua National Monument, the adventure of caving in Coronado National Monument, birding in the San Pedro Valley, visit the wonders of Katchner Caverns, go hiking at the Cochise Stronghold, or see history in the towns of Tombstone and Bisbee. It is stunning how many beautiful places are just a few miles off of the barren I-10 Freeway, so make a point of getting off the freeway and enjoy the beautiful secret sights of SE Arizona. Look for the BLOG about Ramsey Canyon which is another beautiful place in SE Arizona to visit. Also continue to stick around as we cover in detail these different Parks in SE Arizona. Til next time remember "Don't Watch Life, Live It!"

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