Jeff made a quick visit to and experience southern New Mexico. We crammed as much in there as we could. The morning after he arrived, I had to run with the installation on our 9-11 memorial run. Shortly after that, Jeff and I loaded up and went to Dripping Springs, to hike up to the former tuberculosis sanitarium. We haven't had a ton of rain lately, so the springs truly were just dripping.
From there, we made our way to White Sands National Park. It was hot, and it was bright. Even under a hat with sunglasses, the light was painfully intense, so we didn't stick around. We then went up to Cloudcroft to see the Mexican Canyon Trestle. We had lunch at a little BBQ place I hadn't been to yet - but totally will go back to. Mad Jacks is the more famous/busy of the two, but Son-In-Law had great food, too!
After lunch we drove to Bluff Springs, which is about 7-8 miles down a gravel road. We saw a cowboy recovering a run-away horse, and a few other people along the way, but not many.
We drove back to WSMR, since I had a farewell/social function I had to attend. The next morning, Ian, Jeff, and I got up pretty darn early to hit the road - we had a long day ahead of us. We drove to Silver City, where we ate at the slowest Denny's on the entire earth. That didn't ruin our plans at all, since we were probably the third group there, but it did set us back a bit.
After getting fed and watered, we headed north to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. The road twists through the mountains, up and over the continental divide a time or two. We hiked up through a beautiful, and cool, canyon on the way to the cliff dwellings.
We had the dwellings to ourselves - only a park ranger was there with us. A couple of people arrived after, but we had the place basically to ourselves.
Ian showed Jeff the pictographs painted on the walls, which he had learned about on a previous trip.
We hiked back to the car, and checked out a smaller dwelling, and then Spirit Canyon with its many pictographs on the way home.
We took another wonderful, twisty mountain road home, with lunch at Sparky's.
Cheers,
Marc
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