Gila Cliff Dwelling

Gila Wilderness

 

 One of the places to visit near Deming NM is the Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument.  It is one of the prettiest places I’ve been. 

Scout and I arrived about the middle of the afternoon and found the visitor center parking lot nearly empty. Rather than spend time looking inside, we went directly to the cliff dwelling trailhead.  One of the volunteers gave a brief ‘be careful and don’t take anything’ message and I was on my way.

Because of the fore thinking of Aldo Leopold, the Gila River and much of the surrounding land is protected.  The cliff dwellings themselves are in the Gila National Forest and on the edge of a wilderness area protecting, among other things, the Gila River headwaters.

The day I visited was sunny and warm with little wind.  The trail itself is slightly over a mile and set up as a loop.  I meandered along smelling fall leaves that reminded me of Minnesota.  I guess that’s not surprising since there are oak mixed with pine, ponderosa pine, growing in the shady side of the canyon.  Both sheer and eroded rock faces marked one side of the trail and what would be a stream in the rainy season marked the other.  I was told the head of the stream is a natural spring so the people of the cliff dwelling would always have water.  During dry times, the spring water doesn’t make if far down the canyon before it disappears.

As I poke along looking at fall flowers, lichen and patterns on tree trunks, I come to a photo-op sign.  At this point I can see across the canyon and behold a very nice wall at the front of one cave.  There is a row of holes along the top marking where roof beams once rested.  Vandalism started nearly as soon as the dwellings were discovered so there are no roofs nor many roof beams.

The trail crosses the canyon to the sunny side and I climb up a series of steps.  Now I’m passing by cactus and I see little soil.  What I do see is the baked earth look I’ve come to associate with New Mexico.  I approach the first cave.  It has the remains of a wall or two, a fire pit and some stone circles recessed into the ground that ‘they’ think held food or water pots.

I pass another small mostly empty cave and climb more steps into a large, long cave.  The temperature drops by several degrees and the acoustics are such I can hear my breathing sort of echo.  There aren’t any walls in here though the ceiling is blackened probably from smoke.  And the sand that covers the floor has been raked clear of footprints.

I find volunteer rangers next.  I had tried to imagine discovering and then moving to this cave as I walked to it.  The guy I talked to said there was a pueblo a mile or so downstream for 700 years so those people would have known of the cave and they never used it.  Then for some reason a group of people moved into it, build 40 or so rooms and only stayed one generation.  Because of the rains and how they scour the land, there is no trash heap at the base of the cliff and archeologists have found nothing downstream.

Pottery fragments tell they are probably Mimbres from the north.  Tree ring dating from the wood that remains say they build around 1280.  There are food scraps that indicate they used all the types of native foodstuff available in the area and also grew corn, beans and squash. 

On the trail back I continued to speculate on the inhabitants.  All sorts of stories flitted through my mind.  Were there old people or lame people?  They must have used an easier route than the one laid out by the park service.  It may have been a place of ceremony however they didn’t fast while they were there.  Lots of speculation and no answers later I arrived at my starting place to find the gate closed.  I had whiled away close to three hours walking a bit over a mile and looking at seven caves!  It’s a good thing Scout and I planned on spending the night.

In the morning I walked to a second site where there is one very small cave close to the ground.  There are only two rooms here with a small rainy season stream close by and the Gila River not far.  Whoever used it, I found it easy to build my own picture.  I like the idea of a holy man living in it.  I know Anglo-European culture doesn’t allow for holy men living in caves however other cultures do and to me it fits the area and the little I have learned of these ancient people.

Leaving was hard.  Sometimes I almost hear sounds that aren’t and feel the passing of something that isn’t.  Am I suffering from too much imagination?  I don’t know, except leaving was hard.

Gila River

Bad News / Good News

Bad news -
For a few days I wondered why I had decided to strike off into the well-populated unknown on my own.  The electric converter failed so I have no lights, the outlet still works if I have a camping spot with a plug however the lights are gone.  I had supper guests that night and watching the lights fade was disturbing.  We finished eating by candlelight.

A call to the closest Aliner dealer, there is one in New Mexico, gained me nothing; they don’t do warranty work for anyone other than there own customers.  I found two dealers in Arizona however one never answered the phone and the other seemed to be out of business.  Next closest was south of San Diego.  The fellow from there was quite helpful.  They would take out my faulty converter, send it to the manufacturer for verification it was faulty and then install a return unit.  The whole thing would take 8-10 weeks.

I moved to a different camping location, one without electricity, and dug out my new duel-fuel Coleman camp stove and found something wasn’t working so I could not pressurize the fuel tank.  A cooking campfire took care of that night and my back-up backpacking stove helped me through a couple more days, however it is volatile to light and needs to be used outside, I didn’t always have an outside table and my knees are creaky. I'd like all that to be an oh well, however it often turns into a damn!

Then, when Scout and I went to the cliff dwellings, my brakes smoked so badly going down some of the hills, I thought I had ruined them.  We cautiously took a less hilly way to the closest State Park.

Good News –
I finally called my son and asked his opinion on a California repair.  He was able to put voice to some of the mixed thoughts I was having.  At the end, I bid him good-by and headed in a generally western direction.  A couple of days later I stopped in Douglas AZ for a information break.  As I returned to my car, I walked around Scout as I usually do, checking tires and things before driving.  There on the back of Scout was the name of my dealership and the phone number.  Since I was in cell-phone service I called my guy.  He said swapping out a bad converter would take a couple of hours and he could do it whenever we came in.  He even suggested a couple of make-shift fixes for lights until I did come in.  So, no more trip to California!

I returned to New Mexico and visited the cliff dwelling, landed in a state park, unhitched and headed to Deming to have my brakes fixed.  I was able to get and appointment the same day I brought in my car.  The brakes are fine, the smoking didn’t hurt them.  The car guys also changed my oil for 2/3 the cost of having it done at home.  And the manager knows my son and had some nice things to say about him.

Finally, I had the receipt for the stove with me, I bought it at a chain that has a store in Deming and since I was well inside 90 days, they traded my bad stove for a new one. Guess that makes it a hot damn!

week 3

Finding places is a problem for me.  I’ve been frequently told directions and then the teller has added “You can’t miss it.” however I generally do.  Once I find a place its easy to find it a second time, however I still can’t tell the difference among a dirt shoulder, a dirt driveway and a dirt street.  Or I’m told, go past the dirt dam, well there are piles of dirt everywhere.  Some look like they are on purpose and some are hard to tell.  Most of them are in low rows and have been shaped into long barrows for out here dirt is dozed both to make water holding ponds and to direct water away for erosion control.  To inexperienced eyes, they all look the same.

When I did find the dirt dam, it was 20-30 feet high and the road hugged it for several hundred feet.  It would be easy to recognize a second time.  I didn’t care about the dams, I was looking for the pictographs that lay somewhere above the second dam.  (Pictographs are painted on rock while petroglyphs are scratched into the surface.) Eventually I found them and they are well worth the effort of locating them.  Naturally I chose the hardest way possible.

There was supposed to be a path, the can’t-miss-it kind, at the top of the dam.  There were dozens of paths and I was not clever enough to tell the people path from the cow paths.  So, I opted to walk in the valley to the end of a very eroded rock wall.  On the way back, I walked on the rock face climbing over broken stones, stepping where cows had stepped.  I figured if they could walk over rock looking for food, I could walk there looking for pictures.

Most of the rock was so badly eroded I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to paint on it.  When I was nearly back to my starting point, I saw a rock face that looked promising.  As I approached it, I saw a faint picture of a person sitting down holding a staff, however I didn’t know if it was old or the drawing of a clever art student.  There is a boulder in front of it that looks to be a good seat.  A couple of handy stones made it fairly easy to reach the top.  As I hoisted myself up high enough to see the sit-upon part, I saw large, bright pictures filling the top.  Wow! Expecting to sit and examine and instead seeing an array of quite wonderful drawings is still boggling.


Scout didn’t come with me on that excursion since I have learned pulling a trailer is both harder and easier than I thought it would be.  For years I’ve driven over bad roads and I have found if I am careful, Scout can come too.  Careful is the key.  One road we took was poor at best.  It had been graded since the rain months, monsoon season, so we did fine as long as I stayed around one or two miles an hour.  We were doing so well that I decided to visit a cemetery I’d seen from the road.  That road crossed a dry wash with a bed of small gravel rather than the stones I had been crossing.  We couldn’t make it.  I abandoned Scout in mid-bed and prepared for a rescue.  Fortunately I have both a tow strap and a come-along.  Together they were just long enough to reach Scout and pull her free.  Once she was out, I switched to the strap to pull her up the bank.  When we were on the level I hitched up and we were on our way.
 
The scenery makes it all worth-while. This is a state of strong contrast.  When it rains, the ground is so hard most of the water runs off so water control is a major problem.  At the same time, its desert so cactus are everywhere.  Parts of the state are very windy, roads here are closed by sand storms.  The combination of strong wind and drenching rain leaves intriguing weathering on both rock and land.  Since most of New Mexico was volcanic, there are cones everywhere rising up out of seemingly flat land.

And the contrast between owning too much and not enough is just as apparent.  I saw homes that easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and signs of people living in failed businesses.  Towns that were written up as thriving artist colonies a few years ago are now filled with closed shops.  And one town on the interstate has a loop called Motel Drive.  All the motels I saw on that road were closed.  Yet parts of the town was thriving and the community seemed to be doing what it could to attract customers. 

Maybe New Mexico is fortunate that tourism is a significant business.  Also I think government is a major employer, at least from what I have seen.  The border patrol is a huge presence in this southern part of the state.  Where I have been, patrols are frequent and installations pointing to the border are common.  Over two days, I saw one rancher on each day and dozens of border patrol vehicles each day.  I was feeling paranoid by the time I left that part of the state and the road signs didn’t help.  

We Have Arrived

Four plus days of driving and Scout and I are watching the morning sun move across the plain below us.  We are camped a little way up the side of the Florida Mountains in New Mexico at Rockhound State Park.  In the distance I can see Deming sprawled in a long thin line.

Calling my trailer Scout is neither creative nor cute on my part.  The trailer is an Aliner and my model is labeled Scout, in large letters across its backside.  What it actually means is I have a very basic small model.  It also means its light enough to pull with my car, a Honda Civic, if I don’t overload. (This year’s trailer model weighs 200 pounds more so I would have to pull it empty.)  Since I have been a tent camper for years I have the gear and know how to wash dishes without a built-in sink.

Aliners are low like a tent trailer however they open into a triangular shape with rigid walls and sides.  And the walls are insulated making it a bit warmer than a tent trailer.  Mine will be perfect for one person once I figure out where to put things.  Packing is a daily activity even when traveling with a trailer, and it may be the most important.  A couple of days ago I moved a box of books from behind the driver seat to behind the passenger seat.  Changes in drive performance were both subtle and advantageous.

When I tent camped with the kids it used to frustrate me that it took and hour and a half to get everyone up, fed and packed back into the car.  Now I’m finding it still takes that much time to get just me going.  I began starting my days earlier and discovered it still took until dark to reach the next stopping spot.  Admittedly I added some breaking points I found interesting.

While I was trying to find my park of choice in Iowa the first night I was intrigued by the southern horizon; it was sprinkled with red blinking lights as far as I could see.  That part of Iowa is hilly so I was seeing a spread that looked to be a couple of miles.  In the morning I discovered the lights were marking a wind farm that spread forever.  The towers themselves are in neat rows and the rows are hugely far apart and easily spread over a couple of miles or more.  I saw several other wind farms in Iowa though none as huge as the first one until I neared Dodge City, KS. 

The wind farm in Kansas has an observation spot and information board.  There I learned each wind turbine sits on one acre and the 76 windbines at that site are spread out over 5,000 acres.  Nothing said why so much space was needed; guess I’ll take a library stop to figure that out.

Between wind farms I stopped at the Watkins Woolen Mill State Park and State Historic Site outside of Eureka Springs, MO.  Logistics have always fascinated me so the woolen mill itself stopped being my main interest nearly as soon as my tour guide started talking.  Mr. Watkins and his family were a business people.  He needed bricks to build the mill so he started a brickyard.  The mill also needed wood so he started a sawmill.  Sawmills need power so he started breeding mules.  Animals, and people, need feed so he grew feed crops and also built a gristmill into the back of his woolen mill.  Once the mill was up and running it needed wool so he had sheep.  Part of the milling process involved sprinkling the wool with lard so he raised and butchered 80-120 hogs a year.  The hogs meant he needed some kind of lard processing operation and he also smoked the meat and sold it in his store.  He provided housing and meals for most of his workers so his wife and daughters had an acre garden.  They canned and sold extra at the store.  Mr. Watkins also planted an orchard and a couple of daughters developed a thriving market for dried fruit.  Meanwhile Mrs. Watkins raised 600 chickens and 150 turkeys. 

The woolen mill tour didn’t talk about family life so I will probably return to take the house and outbuilding tour.  I do know Mrs. Watkins didn’t spend all her time with her birds since she raised nine children and two foster children.  The brief bit of information I have says there were typically 15-20 people living in the household most of the time.  Meals, laundry, dishes, mending – Mrs. Watkins had to have been a match for her husband!

Earlier that day I’d stopped at a little park and found hickory nuts.  Mostly I found husks but with searching I collected 12 intact nuts and proceeded to crack them.  Of my 12, 3 had wormholes I’d missed while picking them and 6 were moldy inside.  My three remaining nuts looked pretty good so I ate them; two were green and the remaining was one of the tastiest nuts I’ve eaten.  I hope the squirrels did better than one in twelve, or maybe they did since I had the leavings.

At the woolen mill campground I found pecans.  Most of those nuts seemed sound though I tried only one.  I think it was green since it was very puckery.  That campground was the first time on this trip that I had to back into my camping spot.  I’m still learning how to back up. By the time I was situated I was thinking oh nuts! and was not really interested in finding any.

Much of eastern Kansas is rolling hills; I did not remember that from past trips and found the landscape rather interesting.  What I do remember is sunflowers and I saw only one field of them.  One little town had a sign that said “Kansas, the wheat basket”.  In the background was a pile of corn higher than its surrounding trees.  Next to it was a smaller pile of milo.  The wheat harvest was long done so it too may have been piled as high.

Once the land leveled out, I started feeling wind gusts from semis when they passed me going the other direction.  One or two weren’t a problem however when there was a string of them, Scout was buffeted and had to be alert.  As I neared Dodge City, KS those semis were mostly pulling empty livestock trailers.

After Dodge City I took less popular roads as I angled through a corner of Oklahoma.  There I found many feedlots.  Usually I saw clouds of dust well before the feedlot came into view.  There are feedlots in Iowa too (pigs seem to be gone) though the ones I saw were not as large or as dusty.  To be fair, Iowa was much wetter than what I found in western Kansas where the ground was cracked and even flies stir up dust.  All the rivers I crossed had long bridges spanning nothing except green growing things.  Some had ruts where drivers had gone four wheeling.  They must be mighty rivers sometimes but not now.

On my road last day I crossed the Pecos River and there was water in it.   Anyone who grew up with Zane Grey and cowboys knows about the Pecos.  There were no rustlers and I did not find any empty shells when I stopped. Still, a bit of yesterday’s mystic lingered as I skipped a stone across its surface.

Roswell was next on my list of stops though not the UFO stuff for me.  Roswell is host to the Eastern New Mexico State Fair.  Fairs mean cotton candy and I was ready to buy a treat.  Arriving in New Mexico, my destination state, had to be good for something.  Mostly it’s a 4-H fair with animal competition only for the kids.  I saw groups of kids with score cards doing judging.  A parent told me there is judging competitions for everyone from 8 to 18.  After watching the kids practice appraising quality, I spend some time following excited rug rats exclaiming over real animals.  Some of the sheep were wearing blankets, neck wraps and muzzles.  The muzzles looked a bit strange to me.  Later I learned that weight is an important part of competition and muzzles control what the sheep eats. 

After looking at the animals and talking to some folks I headed to food row for my cotton candy.  I found typical at-home fair food and NO cotton candy.  There were lots of stands selling funnel cakes but NO cotton candy.  I was so disappointed I left without finding out about funnel cakes.  And now I’ve landed.  Maybe there will be cotton candy someplace else.

October Starts

It’s a done deal. I am officially out of my apartment and on the road.  Right now ‘the road’ consists of visiting family and friends so it doesn’t feel like a trip.  Yesterday a friend, today family and tomorrow I’ll help mother celebrate year 96.  Then I can head south, as far as Mankato, again.

There is a light on the dash that has been annoying me for several weeks.  First its on and then its off, sometimes I feel the car do strange things and sometimes I feel nothing.  I talked to a friend with the same brand car and she said required maintenance could light the light.  Well, I needed an oil change before leaving so that made some sense, however the light did not agree.

How to choose a garage has always been fraught with anxiety for me.  There are many stories of rip-off mechanics and nearly none about good mechanics.  Over the years I’ve come to believe people guard their mechanics like a favored fishing spot or a place to find morel mushrooms.  This time a quick internet search for a mechanic led me to a garage with an interesting name and a couple of good reviews.  A phone call later I spent a fast five minutes waiting to hear how many hundreds of dollars and days it would take.  I could have been more trusting; the guy did have MPR playing. 

So after mother’s birthday breakfast I head south to the mechanic, who assures me the problem, while having strange effects on the car, is relatively easy to fix, will only take a couple of hours and won’t be costly.  I remain hopefully skeptical; if his appraisal is true I will guard his name as a prized camping spot.