We are off and it feels really good. It felt as if it had been forever since we had traveled and we were ready to go. We had a bad case of hitch-itch.
We left Surprise and stopped in Willcox Az. Our first trip from there was to Chiricahua National Monument, a very interesting area of rock formations.
We also visited an area of a national forest called Cochise Stronghold. Here the famous Indian leader Cochise and his band of Apaches would get up in these rocks and no one could get them out.
We hiked into Apache Pass. This pass through the mountains was used for almost all travel through this area until the railroad was built a few miles north. This pass was used because it has a year round spring. We dangled our fingers in the spring that was used by Cochise, Geronimo and by people for hundreds of years before them. There were so many Indian attacks in the pass that the Army built Fort Bowie to protect the travelers.
From AZ we moved on to City of Rocks State Park north of Deming NM, another area of interesting rocks. (It seems as if we have some sort of rock theme going on here.)
And peaceful, beautiful New Mexico scenery.
Our timing was good for wildflowers. Here are a few of the many we found.
We drove north of Silver City, NM to walk the “Catwalk Trail”. This is a trail built in a very narrow canyon and at one point uses a metal walkway supported from the sides of the canyon.
After our hike we drove up into the mountains to visit the old mining town of Mogollon. We stopped for gas but I guess the station was closed for lunch.
From City of Rocks State Park we moved to Caballo Lake. One of the large lakes on the Rio Grand River near a town that is actually called Truth or Consequences. On one of our day trips we were able to hike on a part of the Camino Real called the Jornado del Muerto ( a rough translation is the Royal Road and Journey of Death.) The Camino Real was a road that ran from Mexico City, Mexico to Santa Fe, NM and was first used by the Spanish in 1597. The Jornado del Muerto section was a usually waterless section that took several days to travel.
Finding places like this is one of the main reasons we like to travel. It is a great feeling to walk a desert trail where people have walked for hundreds of years. We saw a picture taken not far from here from an airplane. It showed, running parallel to one another and within several hundred yards of each other, the Camino Real, a gravel county road, a railroad track and Interstate Highway I25. Four hundred years of transportation history in a few yards.
We moved to near Las Cruces NM and visited the museum at the White Sands Missile Range. A bit of a shock from the Camino Real.
We took a hike in Dripping Springs Natural Area in the Organ Mts. A lot of people wound not think that there is scenery like this in south central NM.
We will soon be off again on our New Mexico adventure. It is starting to get hot here in the south so we will be moving up in elevation and/or moving north to find some cooler weather.
