Last days at Chimney Rock

The day before we were leaving, it rained all day long.  We even got a little bit of pea size hail in the evening. The sunset was fantastic. We even had a bit of a rainbow.

The last morning here, we drove to the end of the road near the monument.

The Chimney Rock Visitor Center is closed so we continued on to the Chimney Rock  Cemetery.  We found some markers for people who had died on the Oregon Trail.  The families had returned later and replaced the simple markers with ones made of hard rock like granite. This cemetery is still used today by the local people.

We continued down a small trail to the base of the monument.  The cliffs nearby show the geological history of the area.

We had a couple of girls on the trail behind us and they continued up on the outer edges when we turned back to the parking lot.  Can you see them in the picture before I started zooming in on them?