CatWalking

 

I've heard that Silver City New Mexico was a place not to be missed, so miss it I did not. Well, maybe I did miss it a bit – I didn't make it into downtown Silver City, but I did show up and visited some of the sights Silver City is known for. 

First, I have to show you a picture of my camping site in Silver City. Manzano's RV Park rocked. Not only did I have a nice site, but if you are there on Saturday night, you are invited to dinner. They call it part of their weekend package. Ribs, chicken, asparagus and Mac&Cheese.

The Gila (pronounced Hee la) Cliff Dwellings National Monument was declared a National Monument in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Mogollon people resided in these dwellings around the year 1400. They took natural caves, high up on the side of a cliff and built rooms inside these caves. The Monument lies about an hour north east of Silver City. I would say it is a lovely drive, but then I wasn't driving. It was twisty and turny, with many ups and downs. Thank you Lou for taking that bullet. 

On the way to the Cliff Dwellings we passed an open pit mine. See those little dots on the roads?  Those are those giant trucks, the ones with the tires that are twice as tall as I am.  Big big hole in Mother Earth's side.  

Something didn't seem right about Gila – I kept thinking that maybe I might have been there before, but I couldn't have. I mean, I would have remembered, wouldn't have I? When you get to the site, you have to hike down a trail and then up some steps. When I got to the top, I knew definitely that I had been here before.  I checked my blog later, the keeper of all of my memories and yup, I had been there before.

These two trees bring closeness to a whole other level
The tree on the left is called a Alligator Juniper - at least that is what the ranger said

The caves

The view from their living room

I was most excited about going to the Catwalk Recreation Area. Back around the turn of the twentieth century, several mines were developed at the top of a canyon. They built a water pipe halfway up the canyon wall to deliver the ore three miles down the canyon to the ore processing plant. On top of this pipe, they built a wooden plank-board walkway to get from the mine site back down the canyon. Hence the name Catwalk. Eventually the CCC replaced the Catwalk with a metal walkway, but you can still see parts of the original infrastructure bored into the canyon walls. This was a most satisfying site.

Jon and Davey at the start of the trail

New Mexico Mountains