Sunday, April 3, 2016
Silver City to Gila cliff dwellings
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| In the dwelling |
Taking the bike out the back door of the motel 6 got in the way of an angry young woman with abrasions on her face. Similarly the night before at the Tre Rosat there was a hulking fellow bundled in layers of long worn coats nursing a mug of coffee concerning whom S ultimately asked if his bill could be added to ours which waitress seemed to accept but it never showed up on our ticket; that sort of thing was there in the background to the charming old west restoration for us passers-through that Silver City was working.
Anyway they had cheap gasoline and we got a bunch of it and headed up New Mexico 15 to the ancient cliff condos of the Mongollon people; too bad we didn't get a bunch of food.
New Mexico 15 was a narrow, swoopy little thing that in 28 miles and two hours got us to this private campground beside the Gila River with 3 beautiful hot pools for the strange, even uncanny price of $6 per person per night. The place was run by a very hands-on woman in jeans and a cowboy hat named Carla. There were also maybe 100 goats half of whom were way capricious kids gamboling and throwing their little heads this way and that as little goats will. Fortunately all these were fenced.
The guests at this never-never land camp were also interesting in their diversity and laid -backedness: next door was a family of traveling entertainers (I saw he juggled; not sure what else or what the wife and two little girls did), one night in the southernmost hot pool we listened while two animated young women in bikinis chattered on a really disparate number of subjects from the importance of following your heart to the problems one faced trying out the hula hoops at Walmart, a slender and intense young woman looking to find paid wilderness work, a couple New Zealanders on really nice bikes riding from Los Angeles to Florida who said Subarus were garbage, breaking our hearts and trampling on our recent car dreams.
One of the many good things about this camp was that with the shared pools we met and chatted with many fellow travelers which doesn't happen in the state parks for instance since often the only community location is the toilet.
The cliff dwellings were well supervised but resonant with the old people who built and used the nifty habitation for a generation and moved on.
It was however another 3 coat, 2 pants night for me; I believe S has a better sleeping bag.
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| Nighttime temperature datum |
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| Hot pool at Gila Hot Springs Camp - one of three |
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