Silver City is a charming old mining town on the Continental Divide in southwestern New Mexico. We spent over a week there visiting my cousin Marie and her husband Gordon. They wined and dined us and took us everywhere. It was so wonderful to spend quality time with them.
Rose Valley RV Ranch was a lovely place to stay. Our camper is on the lower right.
The Santa Rita copper mine is a mile across & 1600 feet deep—one of the largest open pit mines in the world.
Marie and I in the Gila National Forest.
The Catwalk is a mile trail following a path of an 1890’s water pipeline for a mining town down the mountain. The Catwalk crosses the creek on many bridges and clings to the canyon walls. What a glorious hike!
The suspension bridge.
Don and Gord at the end of the trail.
Great old sycamore trees grace the picnic area at the trailhead.
The Gila Cliff Dwellings were built by Mogollan people in the late 1200’s. They had to bring rock and mud for mortar up to these caves high on a cliff, as well as water and the food they grew in the valley below on a tributary of the Gila River. Soot still stains the ceilings, and walled rooms still divide each cave. The trail winds through the canyon and up the side of the cliff—another wonderful hike.
Between 1985 and 1903 several flash floods took out Silver City’s Main Street and carved out The Big Ditch, 55 feet deep for miles.
City of Rocks State Park is an array of volcanic rock left in clusters that look almost like buildings with winding paths among them. Wandering and climbing the rocks was like being a child again.
We have been doing a lot of rocky hikes, and Don valiantly makes it up and down, over stones and around boulders, through icy patches and dark places. I guide him and usually manage to help him avoid the roughest parts. The views and experiences have been worth it as Willy Nelson reminds us, “seeing things we may never see again.”
Look at the color of that sky!
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