Mountains and Mountains

Last weekend was EPIC. But first, Dustin found out he was in fact going to be deployed, probably in the next 6-8 weeks. So, this turns out to be just a long vacation, which I am okay with.

Saturday we went out to Coronado National Park, just north of the Mexico border. We went to the welcome center, got some maps, and flashlights, and went to the climbing point. We started up hill, and ran into something we didn't expect - really thin air. You always hear about that stuff, but man, it's insane how hard it is to breathe. So, we ventured upwards, taking frequent breaks and finally reached the top of Coronado Peak, elevation 6,824 feet. We enjoyed the view of Mexico, and walked around the top a bit. We climbed out to a rock cliff, took a crap ton of pictures, and finally started back down.

We went to visitor center to refill the water bottles before trekking to the cave. It was .75 practically straight up to the cave mouth. It was brutal, almost worse than the mountain, although, we hadn't eaten much, and we were already tired from, you know, climbing a mountain. So after the ridiculous incline to the cave, we climbed down into it. It seemed a lot smaller than it actually was. We shined the flashlights, and saw nothing but wall, but once we got down into it, we saw that it actually went really, really far. We explored, tried to fit into small openings, got really, really dirty, and enjoyed the nice, cool, temperature before heading back to the climb to leave to cave. The walk back saw a few lizards, some strange bugs, and a challenging downhill trek back to the car, and we didn't have much water left after the journey up. But it was worth it, the cave was really cool, and worth the extra work to get there.

It was seriously one of the coolest days of my life. I'm really glad we got to do it. We were staring when we finally left, and got some pizza to recover and rest, because Sunday, we were going to Tucson.

We had high hopes for Tucson, it didn't really deliver. I had three ideas for things to do, first was check out the Mission San Xavier del Bac, and indian church, and an old Spanish mission just south of downtown. We thought it was going to be really cool, and from the outside it was. But the little museum was, well, just a little museum, the inside was small, and it didn't exactly knock out socks off. It was cool because it's one of the things you're supposed to see in Southern Arizona, but we didn't spend more than 30 minutes there I think, including the gift shop. So into downtown we went.

So next our plan was to check out the University of Arizona. We did, it's small, and seemed to have very few distinguishing characteristics that set it apart from other colleges. But we parked and strolled around a bit. Then got back on the road. When we were driving in, we saw a U of A "A" painted on the top of a peak, and thought it was cool. Upon closer inspection, we noticed you could drive up there, and check it out. So we drove around for almost an hour to find the road to the top. After stopping to ask for directions, we found the road to A Mountain, or Sentinel Peak. We got there, took some awesome views of downtown Tucson, and climbed to the top, because we're climbers now.

Then we went to our original purpose, the Tucson Toros game. We drove over to Hi Corbett Field, where the Toros were playing the St. George Roadrunners. It was also dollar hot dog night, so that was exciting. We got a six pack and drank a little in the car before going in. We were sure it was going to rain, but mercifully, it held off for the whole game. We enjoyed the desert night, even watching the Toros lose 5-1. When it was over, we went back to good ole Sierra Vista. Such an incredible weekend. Truly one to remember forever.