Cochise Stronghold. How’s that for the name of a place?” asked Glenn as he read Blue Highways, a book about author William Least Heat-Moon’s journey along the back roads of the United States. The evocative place name launched an Internet search for the stronghold, which in turn set us planning a trip to Cochise County, named for the Apache chief, in the southeastern corner of Arizona.

Once there, our biggest sense was of the American Indian presence and how it was forever changed by the arrival of Europeans. As we drove through the Arizona desert of “sky islands”—small separate mountain ranges—we could imagine bands of Indians dwelling among them.

Much of the fun of traveling is the surprises along the way. Imagine, for instance, how bemused that ferocious Apache leader would be to learn there now is a Cochise Stronghold Bed-and-Breakfast. In fact, we slept in the B and B’s big “tepee”—complete with a hole in the top and a fire pit in the floor— and gained a small sense of how Cochise’s people lived.
 
Today in Cochise County, Fort Huachuca still is an active military base. The onetime copper- and turquoise-mining town of Bisbee provides a weekend getaway with its B and Bs and art galleries. And the famed frontier town of Tombstone features shootouts on the street, a great museum, and some B and Bs of its own.

Cochise County is a bird-watching hot spot, and when we visited Ramsey Canyon, a Nature Conservancy reserve, a new hummingbird became No. 259 on Marilyn’s “Life List” of different bird species she’s seen. At the nearby Casa de San Pedro—a B and B where we stayed—there were binoculars at every window, bird-watching programs on the computer, and a $100-a-month birdseed budget.

Still, the American Indian connection was pervasive. As we walked around Cochise Stronghold, which has hiking trails and a campground, we saw how Cochise’s band could have eluded the U.S. Cavalry for years. A road trip through Chiricahua National Monument, with its remarkable geology, showed us more hideaways.

Coronado National Monument also is in Cochise County. A museum marks the head of the trail where the Spanish conquistadors started their march toward Cibola—the fabled city of gold—and put an indelible mark on the Southwest. We followed the conquistadors’ route to Albuquerque, N.M. (No gold in sight.) The new gold is in the shops selling American Indian artwork surrounding the classic Spanish plaza in Old Town Albuquerque. Vendors display their wares on blankets on the sidewalks.

In a low-key strip mall a few blocks from Old Town, we found the Turquoise Museum, which houses an amazing collection of turquoise from many mines. The gorgeous Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., launches itself from 10,678-foot-high Sandia Crest, then heads north through the frontier mining towns of Golden, Madrid, and Cerrillos.

We were captivated by the charming, fantastical Tinkertown in Sandia Park, N.M., where 50,000 glass bottles compose the walls of a 22-room museum containing thousands of miniature figures carved over more than 40 years by Ross Ward. The museum also contains his lifetime collection of paintings and memorabilia.

The Taos Pueblo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site considered the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States, is in Taos, N.M., farther north on the trail to Cibola. The pueblo had been occupied for at least 500 years when the conquistadors arrived in the 1500s. Old Town Taos is built around a historic plaza and is known for its art colony and small museums.

Taos is a patriotic town with a large retired military population. We ran into retired B-52 and F-15 pilots and Air Force veteran Ray Vinella, an artist and longtime Taos resident. “Life’s been good to me,” he says, as pleased as the others to shake hands with Glenn, also an Air Force veteran.

Taos artist J.D. Challenger combines patriotic and American Indian themes in his life-sized paintings. His art gallery has a “blessing wall” listing every Taos resident serving in the armed forces. A prayer is said each morning for their safe return home.

The world is a classroom

We like to learn while we travel, and Elderhostel, which has grown from a few programs in 1975 to more than 10,000 a year, is an excellent way to do so. It has an amazing range of topics, locales, and prices, and nearly 170,000 people 55 or older participated in 2004. Some programs, such as bicycling, are active; some involve hobbies such as bird watching or singing; and others are designed to include your grandchildren.

We chose a program that explored archeology, geology, and anthropology along northern Arizona’s Mogollon Rim. Our base was a pleasant mountain resort, and our group numbered about 30, including couples, two female cousins from different states, and a number of solo travelers.

Each day we attended great lectures. An archeologist demonstrated how early American Indians created pottery and guided us around a preserve to explain its pueblo ruins.

A geologist helped us discover small fossils in a road cut and took us to Petrified Forest National Park. Area residents, including a Western singer and a 94-year-old author born in an Arizona tent city where her father was building the Salt River Dam, also gave presentations.

“The Elderhostel appeal,” explains one 75-year-old participant from Michigan, “is you are with interesting people who are not rocking-chair types.” The other appeal is that once you are there, with meals and an interesting itinerary arranged, you can just sit back, learn something, and enjoy the people and the place.

Wagons, ho!

We’ve always been intrigued by tales of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so when we heard about a wagon train headed for their hideout at Hole in the Wall, Wyo., we flew to Casper, Wyo., to climb aboard. The wagon master actually shouted, “Wagons, ho!” as we pulled out, and soon we were watching the deer and antelope play as we got a taste of the settlers’ rough road west.

“Wagons were the way of life for the beginning of this country,” notes Spiritriders Wagon Train owner Mikel Carmon. “You think about those pioneers, it’s just incredible.”

Carmon strives to create a true experience. “On the other hand,” she says, “travelers don’t want a completely authentic adventure. I don’t want ’em eating hard biscuits with no gravy, and I don’t want to bury them beside the trail.”

So the wagons had modern tires and we had hearty meals from a trailer kitchen. Instead of sleeping under the wagons, we had white, waterproof tepees that were 10 feet in diameter, tall enough to stand in, and a snap to set up.

To enhance the experience, the women working on the wagon train wore prairie dresses and the men’s jeans had no zippers. Travelers were asked to dress with the mid-1800s in mind—no T-shirts or ball caps. After dinner we sang old-time tunes by the campfire accompanied by guitar and banjo.

The slow pace and unspoiled landscape of high lonesome reaches of Wyoming drew us back to the time when a day’s travel was 10 or 15 miles. It underscored, in a way you can’t experience from books or movies, the enormous task the settlers faced when they headed west.

And that’s really what visiting our American West can be—seeing and touching and living our nation’s history.