Thursday was supposed to be a short travel day, from City of Rocks State Park to Lake Roberts in the Gila National Forest, about 50 miles. We should have been there by lunch time. As usual, I disconnected Speedy from power and water and packed every thing outside the van while Ellen stowed things on the inside.
As I went around the van and trailer to make sure I'd not forgotten anything, I noticed that the right tire on the trailer had a bulge about the size of an egg right in the middle of the tread. This was not a good thing. Fortunately, we have a spare tire for the trailer. At first I thought that I'd have to take the bikes out of the trailer to lift it, but, with Ellen's urging, I decided to just chock the good wheel and try the jack. It was obviously the right way to go about it. After all, the jack is designed for the 7,000+ lb. van and the loaded trailer is only about 2,500 lbs.
So, off with the bad tire and on with the spare. Oops! The spare, which is supposed to be inflated to 50 psi, was only 25 psi. I have a little 12 volt air pump that I keep in the tail box of the motorcycle which plugs into the bike battery for bike emergencies, but the bike is in the trailer. Will the cord reach? Just barely. Ten minutes of inflating later, we have the tire up to 40 psi — I said it was a small pump. That seemed enough to get us to a gas station.
As long as I had the air gauge out, it seemed a good time to check the rest of the tires, which I hadn't done in a couple of days. When I got to the other trailer tire, I noticed that the rubber between the tread on it was severely cracked. This was also not a good thing. So it was slowly off to Silver City, about 30 miles away, for two new trailer tires.
By lunch time we pulled into Big-O Tires in Silver City. They had me back the van and trailer up to one of their tire bays, and we figured it would be a while. But in the time it took Ellen to make a couple of sandwiches they were done. Two new steel-belted tires with much more tread than the old ones were mounted and balanced — and they even topped up the spare. We parked under a tree in their lot and had lunch.
Once again we were off to the Gila National Forest. There are two routes to Lake Roberts from Silver City, a short direct one up Rt 15 (29 mi.) and a longer one via Mimbres (45 miles). It turns out the short one is very twisty and not recommended for trailers over 24 ft. We took the conservative route and went the long way. It was twisty enough that we could hardly imagine how much more the other route could have been. It wound through a very interesting landscape as we went past an enormous open-pit copper mine, the Santa Rita Mine, and then up into grasslands at Mimbres and finally into an open forest as we went into the Gila National Forest.
We turned into the Mesa campground at Lake Roberts, which had sites with electricity and water but, by the time we arrived, they were all taken. We found a dry, pull-in site overlooking the lake, which actually had a nicer view than the electric sites. Just enough time for a nice relaxing walk down to the lake and then dinner. Like I said … a short travel day.
Friday dawned as another bright sunny day. Time to dust off the motorcycles and head up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. This was a 25-mile ride (each way) that made the drive to the Gila Forest seem mild. It curved and switchbacked up to 7,400 ft. and then had more curves and switchbacks down to the Monument. A great but fairly slow ride. The speed limit was 35 mph most of the way — and it meant it. The views from the road were spectacular, if you dared take the time to look. There were no guard rails nor shoulders on most of the ride and the land dropped off precipitously. We would ride up a steep switchback and turn just before the drop to oblivion. Not someplace to race around the twisties.
The Gila Cliff Dwellings are a series of six caves containing a Mogollon cliff dwelling of about 40 rooms built into them. They are situated above a creek and near the west fork of the Gila River. Strangely, they were only occupied for only about 25 years before being abandoned. Compared to other sites like Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon, they are fairly small but you can wander through most of the site unaccompanied, which we did. It was interesting but pretty busy. The monument only gets about 40,000 visitors a year, but it is spring break time and it seemed that many were here today.
It was then back on the bikes for another exciting ride back to Lake Roberts. We made a quick stop at the Lake Roberts General Store for milk; the store was much more into beer and not a lot else. We had been warned by a Harley-rider at the campground to watch out for on-coming traffic as there's not much to do here but drink. So now we've put the motorcycles back in the trailer, maybe for the final time this trip, as we're off to Silver City tomorrow to spend a few days with some old friends.
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