Gila Cliff Dwellings - Huffin' and Puffin'

Heading up to Gila Cliff Dwellings. About the year 1200, the Puebloans got to this area and found some caves. Inside the cave they built houses and lived here for quite a while. Then they moved on, leaving their houses behind. Teddy Roosevelt declared this a National Monument back in 1907. I wanted to get here around 1:00 because that is when the rangers were doing a guided tour and I love to do ranger walks. You learn so much – not that I retain a lot of it, but I think I'm learning a little bit here and there.

The Gila (pronounced Hee-la) Cliff Dwellings are in the middle of the Gila National Forest in the middle of a very mountainous area. There are two ways to get there – the first is on Highway 15, a tortuous switch back laden road where it takes you two hours to go about 35 miles. The other is along Highway 35, which goes through a series of valleys. Highway 35 is about 40 miles longer but a lot easier to drive. I set my GPS for Gila and took off. I meant to go on Highway 35, the easier way, but my GPS had different ideas and I found myself on Highway 15. I am so very glad I was not driving the RV. We would not have made it. With the car, it was a great deal of fun. I have never driven so many tight switchbacks in my life. Add to that altitude, trees, no center line and it was a blast. The views were incredible. I wish I wasn't so afraid of heights, because along most of the road it was straight down. I would definitely die if I went off the road here. It took me most of two hours to get to the Visitor Center and then you had to walk about a half mile to actually get to the dwellings themselves.

What they don't mention is that a lot of that half mile is up 175 steps. You start off in the woods, following this peaceful little stream. It is lovely, babbling brook, filtered sunlight. Then you get to the stairs. They are uneven rock steps cut into the side of the hill, switch back style. By the time I got to the top, I was huffin' and puffin'. The ranger was waiting as well as a group of about 7 young adults – early twenties. They all moved over to let the old lady sit down and recover. Ranger Joan loved her subject, had explanatory cards to show and was very knowledgeable about the dwellings. It was hot on top of the mountain, the sun was beating down – that filtered sunlight was no more. There are six caves and the National Park Service had done a lot of renovation to show us what it might have looked at when it was an active settlement.

After the tour, I walked down the mountain and headed out. I was going to do the easier way home. It was scenic, but no where as scenic as the arduous trip on the way up. I highly recommend the hard way. The whole trip took me about six hours. Miko was very patient waiting for me at home.

At home, tidying up and then the sunset walk around the park. Sunsets are really glorious, they turn everything a really nice reddish yellow color and then pffft, the colors are gone.

Another wonderful night sky – I am trying to spend some time outside every night trying to remember which star is which. When I get back to Minnesota, I won't be able to see the stars as I see them here.

The trail to the dwellings before it got steep

Looking out of the cave across the canyon

The other side of the canyon

One of the houses in the caves

City of Rocks from a distance

Sunset

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blue Skies Do I See

While wandering around the campground last night, I ran into a couple of people from Canada. In chatting with them, they said that they were thinking of leaving today for other places. They are leaving behind an electrical site so I decided I would see if I could grab it before anybody else could. The plan was to head over to the electrical part of the park around 8 and start stalking sites. Evidently I didn't set one of my clocks to mountain time, it was still on central time, so I am out the door by 7:00 a.m. - yes, a.m. I came back every hour, on the hour, looking for an opening. I finally snagged one and started moving over around noon.

Camping World in Tucson finally called me back and told me that they needed two to three weeks after they diagnose the problems with my coach to get parts. Their main business is servicing the RV community, which is constantly on the move. I don't understand why it takes so long to get service done. Needless to say, even though I'm planning on staying in Tucson for a week or two – nothing will get fixed. I will probably just have to wait until I get back to Minnesota.

Lou and Davey have been camping about a half hour away and drove up to go hiking through the rocks with me. Guess they missed me. :-) I set up camp (fridge works fine on electric), and we headed out to the rocks and spent a pleasant hour or two wandering around out there.

What the rocks look like from a distance:

What the area around the rocks look like – the skies are beautiful in this part of the country:

Speaking of skies - there is no light pollution in this part of the country, maybe because there is nobody here, but I have never seen stars as intense as out here.

City of Rocks

Hit the road early – well, 8:30 is really early. The plan was to take freeway through Las Cruces and then head north to City of Rocks State Park. I got to Las Cruces and Siri told me to head north. I followed her advice but it didn't feel right. I pulled off into a rest stop and checked my Mountain Directory West book which lists all the steep descents/ascents and other possible dangerous things in the western mountains. Siri wanted me to cross over Emory Pass. According to the directory “there are two bridges with 12'8” vertical clearance” My rig is 12'6” That is a little too close for comfort in my mind. Reading on “There are many 10, 15, 20 and 25 mph curves.” Add into that some steep grades and I'm thinking this might not be a good idea. I found another route and it was really flat and boring, but sometimes that is good.

City of Rocks State Park is about thirty miles north of Deming. It is in the middle of a flat plain but the strange thing is that there are all of these giant rocks just protruding up out of the ground. They are far enough apart from each other that there is space to climb through them all. It is almost like city streets – hence the name. There was a major volcanic eruption many millions of years ago which left behind all of these rocks.

There are some electrical sites but they were full when I got here so I went around to the back side of the camping area and found a really cool spot nestled right next to the rocks.

Miko and I went and crawled around the rocks for a bit. She is quite a rock climber and she seemed to enjoy it.

I finally was able to collect a New Mexico sunset which was pretty glorious.

Meanwhile, since I am not connected to electricity, my refrigerator switches over to run on propane. It started to go pfffft, pfffft, pfffft and then shut itself off. It sounded like it was trying to light but wasn't getting any propane. I pulled out the manual and it told me to clear the propane line per the instructions in the manual. Seems like they forgot to include that part in the manual. So, I have no fridge. I had a bunch of ice and put that in the freezer – hopefully it will last until morning when I can try to figure something out.