It has been a while since our last entry and we are now back home in Cohasset.
After a couple of days at Lake Roberts, we were off to Silver City to meet our friends, Garry and Kate, who were coming from Berkeley, California. We arrived before they did so we checked into the Rose Valley Ranch RV Park for a couple of days to do laundry, grocery shopping, re-charging various devices and other chores. It was on the outskirts of Silver City near the big box stores. The park was on a street off the main highway but within walking distance of supermarkets.
As far as commercial RV parks go, it was pretty good. The sites were well separated from one another with foliage or fencing between and the showers were modern, clean and commodious. Aside from the price, what more could we ask? We had quiet neighbors as well—the local cemetery was behind our site.
Garry and Kate didn't arrive until late, so we didn't see them until the next day.
On Sunday, we met for breakfast, but they had some family affairs to attend to, so we had a day of lounging around and exploring downtown Silver City and its many coffee shops (they don't call Silver City "The Seattle of the Southwest" for nothing).
The next few days were a relative whirlwind with friends. We were able to stay at Garry's family home, so we had the luxury of a bedroom, showers and a real kitchen for a few days.
Silver City is Garry's hometown, so we spent time seeing the sights and getting some insight into growing up in a small city in the West (much different than the urban East). We toured the local museum, which had a fine collection of Mimbres pottery and a pretty good history of the growth of Silver City as a mining town with an eastern bent. It wasn't the wild west but Billy the Kid grew up here.
The town was well planned with substantial brick buildings and a "modern" street grid. They only made one mistake: Main Street. It ran north-to-south through the middle of town, as usual, except the town was in a bowl and Main Street was at the bottom in an area prone to flash floods. It was flooded so bad that Main Street and most of the buildings on Main Street washed away. The flood was so severe that there is now a 60-foot-deep canyon through the middle of downtown Silver City appropriately called "The Big Ditch". Showing great style, Silver City made the ditch into a wonderful urban park.
After our tour of downtown, it was off to dinner at the Jalisco Cafe, Silver City's best Mexican restaurant. It was Garry's favorite and rightly so, good service, lots of chips and hot salsa, good hot and spicy food and portions that no one could finish … except Ellen who really liked her combo plate (enchilada, chicken taco and chile rellanos) and who was heard to say she would never eat again.
On Tuesday we returned to the Gila Cliff Dwellings with Garry and Kate, taking Route 15 out of Silver City. This was the route we opted not to take when we went up to Lake Roberts, as it was tight and twisty and the Forest Service warned against it. The road lived up to its reputation. It wasn't even a full two lanes wide, not even a center line. It had lots of blind curves and really tight switchbacks. It would have been challenging on the motorcycles but lots of fun. It didn't widen until the intersection with Rt. 35 where we rode it to the Cliff Dwellings a few days earlier. The difference was that we were now passengers in a car and could look out at the spectacular vistas as we rode along.
We hiked up to the Cliff Dwellings with Garry, who remembers first coming out to them in the 1950s, when it was still quite undeveloped. There were still abandoned baskets of prehistoric corn cobs in the storage rooms within the caves at that time. There were no steps, no restrictions as to where you could go and no interpreters. We talked with three different volunteer interpreters, each of whom had a different story about the cliff dwellers. The last one was the most refreshing as she said they were all just stories, no one really knew the actual history.
The next day we went out to the Catwalk Trail at Whitewater Canyon, about an hour north of Silver City. It is a National Scenic Trail within the Gila National Forest. Whitewater Canyon is a steep and boulder-filled canyon which is the course for Whitewater Creek. In the 1890s, a pipeline was built to bring water down the canyon to an ore mill as the creek didn't always flow to the bottom of the canyon. This pipeline was literally hung from the walls of the canyon. Two pipelines were eventually built, the larger being an 18-inch pipe. To maintain it workers went up the canyon balancing on the pipe. This was called the catwalk.
Although the mines and pipeline were abandoned after about ten years and removed, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a suspended trail over the old route in the 1930s. After this washed out and was rebuilt several times, the Forest Service replaced it with the current metal catwalk and bridges allowing a pretty spectacular walk up a canyon that would be a real challenge otherwise.
It was then back to Silver City to pick up Kate and head off to another Buckhorn (restaurant), this one the Buckhorn Saloon and Opera House in Pinos Altos, a village north of town. It is well known for its steak. Since the smallest steak was 16 oz., Ellen and I opted for another green chile cheeseburger, a mere 8 oz. After all, one has to compare Buckhorns on a level playing field. It was a pretty good cheese burger, bigger than the San Antonio Buckhorn Tavern, with better cheese and a better bun, but I thought the earlier cheeseburger was a bit juicier. Stuffed once again, we headed back to Silver City for our last night in New Mexico.
On Thursday we started the long slog back to Cohasset, one that was 2,750 miles long and took nearly five days. It was a rather unintended route. We had originally planned to take the shortest highway route via Oklahoma City, up to St. Louis, through Ohio and New York.
At the end of the first day, we noticed that it was snowing in Missouri and Ohio, just where we wanted to go, so we aimed a bit further south, continuing along I-40 through Tennessee, planning to head up along I-81 through western Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania. But when we got to Knoxville, we found it was snowing along I-81, right where we were headed.
Once again we aimed a little further south, continuing along I-40, over the Smokies, through North Carolina, up I-85 to Petersburg, Virginia, and onto good ol' I-95 and on to home. It took longer, but there wasn't any snow.
After nights in the parking lots of a Texas Visitor Center, a Walmart, a Cracker Barrel Restaurant and a Flying J Truck Stop, we finally made it back home in need of a long shower and a warm bed. Well, almost. We had to wait a bit as the heat and hot water heater were off and had been for seven weeks, our stone walls radiating the cold back at us. But at least we were home.
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