We are back on the road this morning. We only have 200 km to go
for our next stop.
We dumped our gray water before we leave, why carry this weight when
you do not have to.
Goodbye Willcox. We found that Willcox does have a few things to
visit, maybe next time we drive by?
I repeat myself, but the scenery!
Shortly after leaving Willcox, we cross into New Mexico.
We also cross the continental divide.
A few hours later, we enter Deming.
The RV Park is on the east side of town, but we entered on the west
side just to drive down the main street.
Our new home for a week.
Once we are installed, we head to the visitor center of Deming.
We came out of there with lots of good info.
We took a spin around town, just to see what is here, like this grocery
store called Peppers.
Some of the local First Nations art work.
When we got home, we decided to take a dip in the pool. Yes it is
an indoor pool. Michele is having fun with me!
We left the RV Park by 9 am and made a quick stop at the car wash so we
could see out the windows.
We are heading north. The scenery changed quickly.
We go from grassland to mountains. We are taking the scenic route
to get to the Dwellings.
Once again, the sceneries.
We are not only going up north, but also up in altitude.
Because of the twisting road, it will take us over two hours to get to
the Dwellings.
We made bad planing. We have no food with us and we saw no place
to buy some.
We did see this nice General Store, but it was closed.
Let's keep going!
With spring, come the flowers.
We drove as high as 7,440 feet in elevation, WOW!
Before we drove back down in the valley, we made a stop at this
look-out.
The "Gila Cliff Dwellings N.M." is at 5,705 feet of altitude.
Coming in the National Monument and National Forest.
Lucky for us, at the entrance of the National Monument, a Trading Post
(store) is open
with limited food available. The sandwiches are only $4.95 each.
This makes it very expensive per pound, but hey!
The next stop is at the Gila Visitor Center.
We paid our entrance fee, listened to a short movie about the cliff
dwellings.
This is a scale model of the caves and rooms in the cliff dwellings.
Looking from above. You can see all the different rooms.
At the Visitor centre, we can see a memorial for the great Indian Chief
Geronimo.
Geronimo was born close to this place.
Let's go to the cliff dwellings.
This is the Gila River.
The trail to get to the dwelling is a loop of one mile. We took
the easy one for half a mile to get to the dwelling.
Looking down at the parking lot.
And we keep going up.
Just around a corner, we saw the first part of the Cliff Dwellings.
The caves are huge.
Ready to go in.
The Cliff Dwellings are located in a very narrow valley. When you
look out the dwellings, all you can see is the opposite side of the
valley.
The rooms are located inside the cliff caves.
In the U.S., the safety features are next to non-existent.
Like the walkway I am on. I guess the idea is that if you fall
and hurt yourself, I guess you deserved it!
Different view of the rooms in the cave.
The people that lived here were called the Mogollon.
The Mogollon lived here about 700 years ago. Archaeologists
believe the Mogollon only lived in the cliff dwellings for about
25 years. We do not know why of what made them moved away.
After spending about an hour in the caves, we traveled back down to the
parking lot by the other half of the loop.
This was very interesting to see and learn more about the place and the
people living in the cliff dwellings.
A view of the cliff dwelling from the bottom of the valley.
The small cliff dweller creek runs in the bottom of the valley.
After the visit, we drove down the road to hike another short trail to
another dwelling and some pictographs.
The trail is called, "Trail to the past". In less that a quarter
of a mile, we are at a small cliff dwelling.
And half a mile the other way, we come to the wall with pictograph
painted by the Mogollon.
Can you see them?
We believe that even if it was a long way off our main route, it was
worth it.
To go back home, we take another road. I can tell you that this
road
was very narrow and twisty for the first 3/4 of an hour. Once we
got to Silver City, the roads were very nice. Sliver City is a
mining town with many open pit mines around the city.
We made it home by 5 pm. We had a very good day.
Wednesday April 10, 2019
The sky is clear and the sun is shinning.
At least for now! Later on today it will turn very dusty because
of the wind.
So, I am taking you on a tour of the Little Vineyard RV Park. No
wine or grapes here.
The office.
Two views of the RV Park.
The Rec Hall with the indoor pool.
The pool and hot-tub.
The billiard room.
The game room with exchange books and tv.
A part of the Rec Hall.
The main hall.
The other side of the main hall with the kitchen.
Our site.
The wind came up just before lunch.
After lunch, we decided to check out the thrift shoppes in town.
We saw some old 1942 military hangars.
When I told you the weather would change, here it is.
In southern Arizona, New Mexico and south Texas, when the wind blows,
it creates dust storms.
We saw some tumbleweed flying across the road.
That does not keep us from visiting the thrift stores.
One of them had very nice paintings on the walls.
When we got back home, the slide awnings were making quite a racket, so
we pull the slides in for a while.
Michele was reading in the bedroom, so I went to the Rec Hall to work
on our next update for the blog.
Here I am going back to the Rec Hall with a few beers to help me out in
creativity.
The wind died down in the evening and we could finally open our slides.
A MH is not very air tight and with the wind we had, the inside has a
lot of dust all over. We will have to do a big clean up when we
get back to Ontario.
Thursday April 11, 2019
Before we left Yuma, we made an offer to Gaetan and Michelle to take
photos of their 5th wheel as they drove by Deming on the
Interstate. They accepted. So, here we are in late morning
on the overpass waiting for them to drive by. The wind is still
very strong as you can see, but with less dust in the air.
Here they are!
Hello Michelle and Gaetan!
They took a picture of us too!
After lunch, we went in town to visit the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum.
The meaning for those words. Luna is the name of the
county. It is in honor of a local politician named Soloman
Luna. Mimbres is the name of the main river that runs in the
county.
Michele and I with a reproduction of some pottery done by the local
Native.
The first room we visited in the museum was the Old Timer Room.
Some of the history of the local families who have been here since the
beginning.
There is the Doll Room.
A very nice dining set made of silver. The little piece we see on
the right, nobody seems to know what it is for.
If you know, could you contact me and let me know please. Email
to Silver@michele-denis.com and yes, it is a good email address.
This is also the first time we saw some small shoe ashtray.
But, where is Michele?
That is one huge grand-father clock.
A Chuck Wagon from 1923. This is the kitchen for the cowboys
doing the cattle round-up in the spring and fall.
The kitchen side.
A part of the museum is "old shops".
We never saw one like this.
Neither have we ever seen a portable AC in a car (1950?).
I do not know if we ever used railroad date nails in Canada.
At one time, this was cutting edge technology.
The second floor of the museum is just as nice. We can see the
third floor, but the 3rd floor is not accessible to the public.
That is one big collection of bells.
Those TV sure bring back memories.
Got to have a hospital room in the museum.
We must have spent over two hours in this museum.
With the visit over, we went across the street to the Old Custom
House. Back at the end of the 19th century, the frontier between
the US and Mexico was in
Deming. The US wanting to expend the southern railroad in the
south bought some land from the Mexican government. The Mexican
also knew that if they did not sell the land, the US were
going to take it from them one way or the other. With the
purchase of the land, the frontier is now 35 miles to the south of
Deming.
The old custom house is the house of the tax collector, Mr. Field.
One of the rooms has a collection of little baby hats. You can
also see a left hand wood stove, which is rare.
Oouppsss! Sorry about that!
The two museums took most of the afternoon to tour. We loved them.
Friday April 12, 2019
We are back on the road visiting this morning. We are going to
the City of Rocks State Park.
We can see it in the distance.
The information center was built in a way to makes it blend in the
background. Really well done.
As usual, inside they have a small exhibit about the park and its
history. They even have a table where you can actually touch old
bones and other items found in the park.
My pretty Michele.
In the rock formation, they have a campground.
Here are some example of campsites in the Park.
Can you see the face? It has a pirate's hat.
Because of erosion, some rocks ended up in pretty weird position.
The erosion also created some holes in the rocks. The birds love
them. It attracts many species of birds.
It is a nice campground, far from light and noise pollution.
Many of the campsite cannot accommodate RV as long as ours, but a few
could.
On one of the surrounding hills, a look out allows you to see the whole
State Park.
Different views of the Sate Park.
We really enjoyed this park. Maybe we will come back and camp
here?
With the visit of this Rock City State Park over, we head in the
opposite direction to another State Park.
The mountain seems to be close, but it is still about 5 miles away.
You have to be on the look-out for cattle on the road...
Next to the State Park is a conservation area which is part of the
State Park. We have to go up this hill, a 17% climb.
Spring Canyon is part of the Rockhound State Park. It has some
kind of exotic deer given to the US by Libia I think.
We did not see any.
I can also tell you that 17% going down is steep!
Rockhound State Park. It has a nice welcome center.
The campground is located just on the edge of the mountain.
This State Park allows you to pick up and keep rock for your
collection. All of the rock are natural geodes and quartz.
We are not into rocks, so this park left us a little disappointed.
As we are driving back home, we could see some angry clouds.
Deming.
This is the first time we see a caution sign with ducks and rabbit.
Since the sky is all clouded over, I take this time to clean the
windshield of the MH. It really needed it.
We went to play bingo at our RV Park before supper. We were about
10 peoples playing. It was a very basic bingo.
I won a flashlight and some wet-ones for the computer.
Saturday April 13, 2019
This morning, the city has a city wide yard sale at one of the parks in
town. We got there at 8 am to make sure we would not miss
anything.
It is a cool morning at only +8° C. Well, in less that 10 minutes
we were done.
When we got back home, the RV Park had coffee and donuts this
morning. Michele declined to come, but I did go only to be alone
with myself. I had my coffee and talked to myself for a bit and
went home.
Since we are not visiting anything, we went looking for some geocaches
in Deming.
This cache's instruction was asking us what year was the great fire on
Deming. We needed the year as it is the combination to open the
lock and open the box and sign the logbook.
Another style of cache.
Oh the things we see while geocaching. Like dinosaurs!
We also picked up a traveling bug in one of the caches. What is a
traveling bug (trackable) ?
Trackable FAQs.
- What are trackables? - Trackables are physical game
pieces that move from geocache to geocache. Types of trackables
include: geocoins, tags, t-shirts, and more! - Can I keep them? - In most cases, trackables
want to travel. Use the tracking code on the trackable to look up its
goal. Log trackables in order to move them along.
This is the one we picked up. We will leave it somewhere in the
north-east of the US so it can continue to travel.
We found 13 caches today. We even got a little bit of rain on us.
Sunday April 14, 2019
Not much today, a quick trip to Walmart. I worked on our next
blog update.
Just slowly getting ready to travel tomorrow.
