Exploring The Ghost Trail

On our last day in the Patagonia Lake State Park area, we decided to explore along what is called The Ghost Trail.  This road, which is primarily a dirt road, meanders very close to the US-Mexico border. There used to be several mining communities near there, but that was a LONG time ago!!

To get to The Ghost Trail, we had to drive down almost into Nogales, and then the road wound up thru the Patagonia Mountains.  The views were really quite spectacular!  We came upon an abandoned mine along the road at one point.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take the right fork in the road just beyond this mine, and missed driving through some ghost mining towns – oh, well, we’ll just have to visit again!!

There were some great sites to see on the road we did choose.  We came across a historical marker which memorialized Fray Marcos de Niza, known as the first European west of the Rockies.  Although Friar Marcos (Franciscan) served in Peru, Guatemala and Mexico, he was born in Nice, Savoy, France.

 We stopped for a picnic lunch at the Coronado National Memorial.  The views from the Memorial were quite impressive – the top image is of the road we took heading toward the Memorial.  The lower image is the view of the road we had yet to travel…yet.  This Memorial commemorates the Coronado Expedition, led by (appropriately enough) Coronado.  He set out from Mexico, leading a force of more than 1,000 – 340 Spanish soldiers and more than 700 Indian allies and slaves.

As we drove down from the Memorial, we came across some whitetail deer, often seen in the Patagonia Mountains.  I love how relaxed they are – that one small deer just casually checked us out while laying down under the shade of a tree!  In all, a nice ending to a great trip!

Enjoy!