Coronado National Memorial

 Having mentioned Coronado National Memorial in my previous post, I suppose I should say a little something about it. It's not a real big park and it's in kind of an out of the way location, tucked on the border about mid-way between Douglas and Nogales, Arizona, but it's worth a visit.

The park was established in 1940 to commemorate the expedition led by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado 400 years earlier, from 1540-1542, exploring what is now northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. CORO has two sister parks in Mexico that also commemorate the Coronado explorations. One of the missions of the park was to help promote a sense of unity between the two countries, a mission that struck me as being just a tad ironic after seeing the Border Patrol vans sitting on that overlook. The overlook was one of the reasons this particular site was selected for the Memorial: it provides viewscapes of the terrain Coronado and his expeditionary force (339 Spanish soldiers, 1,000 Aztecs) traversed.

 The park includes several hiking trails, including one that goes from the overlook to a marker on the U.S.-Mexico, one to the Coronado cave, and one that goes from the overlook to the Visitor Center (or vice versa). That last one is described as "moderate" if you leave from the overlook and "possibly difficult" if you start from the Visitor Center. Which makes sense -- from the overlook you're going downhill all the way; the worst you have to deal with is some wear and tear on your joints because it's always harder on your joints (knees, hips, whatever) going downhill than it is going up. Uphill, of course, you've got to work a lot harder.