VERONICA KUFFEL

MAY 26 – 29

“Do You Want to Know A Secret” – The Beatles, 1963

Annamaria and I have been living a door apart for seven months. My cousin and godsister, she has a similar taste for adventure and love for the outdoors. The difference–she’s a lot smarter about it.

Anni was one of the first girls to join the Scouts and earned her Eagle Scout designation before college. She grew up traversing the land, hiking all over Tucson and beyond. I grew up in the suburbs and camped in a park near my house.

We wanted to go on a great adventure. My mind was set on visiting Bisbee, and my coworker had introduced me to the idea of Chiricahua National Monument.

While Bisbee is a mountain town turned arts district, Chiricahua is in the process of becoming a national park. They were both located about an hour east and an hour away from each other.

It was only common sense to knock them both out on a weekend road trip.

We decided to take Walie out for a spin during Memorial Day weekend–a four-day epic journey to see what southeastern Arizona had to offer. We got out of work early and left Friday afternoon, driving an easy hour and a half to Bisbee.

Where Tucson is dusted with sand and dotted with cacti and desert plants, the southeastern part of the state is… green. My uncle once told me about the large underground water system along the major highway and how it makes everything around it lush and leafy. There was even water above ground.

I was amazed by the rows of thick-barked trees splattered with veiny green leaves. We drove in and out of patches like these, and out of the patches we stumbled into Tombstone.

TOMBSTONE

If you’ve paid any attention to me in the past two years, you may have noticed I’ve started to like cowboy culture. More specifically, Red Dead Redemption (2).

In late July, the makers of RDR2 will host an international convention at Tombstone, turning the old western town into the videogame city of Blackwater. The whole cast will be there and they’ll have events and activities themed after the game.

And I can’t go. I’m very sad about that.

But strolling around Tombstone was a nice consolation prize. Everything was pretty much closed, but we oohed and awed at the historic town, reading about the gun battles and showdowns that inspired a bulk of Old Western movies.

People clad in vintage get up walked the streets, some appearing to be docents and others, well, regular folks. Anni and I still don’t know if they were actors or residents of the town.

BISBEE

We left in a trail of dust from Tombstone and chugged up the mountains to Bisbee. I’m so grateful we got in at the end of the day–the view was breathtaking.

Sun stained the rocky cliffs red, orange, silver and purple above us. Fairy lights twinkled from building to building as Walie neighed and clogged slowly along. With so many art shops, you wouldn’t believe how unique each one was.

It’s a treasure trove of culture and eccentric behavior in the structures and the people who inhabit them. We parked Walie and headed to one of its many taco restaurants.

It was a little crowded, but nothing too crazy. Every worker was busy, but a boy, maybe in high school, came out of the kitchen and clocked us. He walked up to put down a name for us, a margarita glass in the crook of his arm, a check balancing on his wrist and a pen ready with no paper.

As I gave him my number, he started to etch it on his hand. He then asked for a name and I chuckled. It’s Veronica, but you can just write V. He wrote a very faint V and said he’d have the table ready in 10 minutes with a big grin.

This was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had getting a seat at a restaurant.

We had some decent tacos and left for our vintage trailer park, Shady Dell. Our light blue trailer had a cool sixties vibe, complete with a record player and a few oldie songs.

We ate dinner outside and… Anni and I swear… we saw a line of what looked like aircrafts fly in unison across the sky and then disappear into a star. The next day, we visited the famous Erie Street in Bisbee, and we saw a mural with the same image on a building. I know, spooky.

CHIRICAHUA

We explored the town for a few hours and then headed to our final destination–Chiricahua National Monument.

When we think about national monuments, the first places that come to mind may be Mount Rushmore or Devil’s Tower, usually a small area with immense scientific or historical significance.

One drive through Chiricahua, however, and you quickly realize this site is much more than a national monument. 

Aside from its breathtaking rock pillars, it’s a designated sky island and international dark sky park with four distinct ecosystems. It’s where the Apache tribes took refuge from the U.S. military and where Geronimo made his last stand. It has both unique and accessible trails within the site and sufficient infrastructure in the neighboring city of Willcox.

We pitched Anni’s tent in a nearby dispersed campground with no amenities. We slept there for two nights, cooking hot dogs and beans and freezer-bag meals over the fire. We watched the stars through our tent roof, as the tarp was not in the bag.

During the days, the two of us explored the rock formation caves and talked about making forts and homes in the rocks. Pillars of boulders clung tightly to each other, and some stretches of stone looked like tree bark.

This area is nothing like the Arizona desert I had grown accustomed to, but Anni said this was normal for a lot of areas. It’s a sky island, meaning the altitude and greater access to water allow for more forests and plant growth.

Part of this trip was to investigate what the monument had to offer, especially as a future national park. For the past two years, Chiricahua has been in the Senate and House for park consideration.

There’s a chance it’ll make the cut this year, and my coworker gave me the idea to pitch it to a few outdoor magazines. I wanted to make sure I actually went before pitching the story.

We spent our last day on one of the more popular hikes and then drove back home for family dinner.

Anni and I have lived together for almost a year. This was our first big road trip, and I hope to go on many more with her. It’s one thing to go on trips alone, but it’s a whole other thing to do it with someone you care about. I’m realizing that more and more with my trips.

What’s more, it was an adventure to see the most beautiful parts of a place you’ve come to care about, led by someone who’s lived there all her life.