Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

We took an overnight trip to Silver City which is about 3 hours southwest of Elephant Butte. Its a slow trip over there because you have to cross the Mimbres Mountains that are part of the Black Range. Lots of switch backs on narrow windy roads that are traveled by lots of people in too much of a hurry. You also have to share the road with bicyclists -- no guardrails, no shoulders and we actually met up with people on bikes on their way to one of the National Forest Service campgrounds in the mountains. Luckily there were pullouts along this route so we could get off the road and let folks get around. We met up with one truck later on that had been "in a hurry" and he was pulled over letting his brakes cool --they smelled pretty burnt.

Almost straight north of Silver City about an hour and a half through more mountains in the Gila National Forest are the ancient indian Gila Cliff Dwellings. There are six caves in the cliffs with -- at one time -- up to 40 rooms altogether in these caves. You can walk through them and see some pictographs and all the soot on the ceilings from their fires.

We also went up to the "Catwalk" in Whitewater Canyon. This is about 60 miles northwest of Silver City. The canyon was the site of gold mining in the early 1900's and used to have wooden walkways and bridges. It is now a park with metal, suspended "catwalks" that you can walk on through the canyon. There are beautiful quartz veins running through the rock walls. You can almost smell the gold in this canyon. The mining shut down because it cost more to process the gold than it was worth at the time.

We also stopped at the huge Copper Mines by Santa Clara. We took a picture of one hole in the ground but there were many more just like it in the area. The other interesting thing in this part of New Mexico is that there are a lot of hot springs that you can hike to that are on public land. We didn't check any out because the ones that are easy to get to are very popular. There are many that are 6 to 10 mile hikes. No thanks -- I've been enjoying the private hot springs in Truth or Consequences. One of the nicer ones is Riverbend Hot Springs. For $10 you can soak for an hour looking out over the Rio Grande.