Silver City, NM

Monday, March 7^th, we left Tucson for Silver City, NM to meet up with Bob and Chris Risberg, friends of ours from Plano who are also fulltimers.

We met up at Rose Valley RV Park and got settled in.

Very nice CG with great sites to park in.  Even got the DISH setup and working in a relatively short time!
While in Mesa, Judy finished our plaque for the trailer.

On Tuesday we drove up to the Gila (pronounced ‘HEE – la”) to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  They are about 45 miles away but it takes two hours to get there because it is a mountainous route.  Speeds rarely got about 40 miles per hour.  Beautiful scenery, though.

The Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived there from the 1280's through the early 1300's.  The cliff dwellings were built in the 1280's.  These Pueblo people built their homes in natural caves and in the open.  There are examples of both types of settlements in the monument area.  Probably not more than 8 or 10 families lived in the cliff dwellings at any one time.  The rooms were probably not used more than one generation.

The women averaged 5'1" and the men about 5'5" in height.  They were slight of build, yet muscular, with dark hair and eyes and brown skin.  The sounds of their voices and laughter echoed in the canyon.  And then there were only the sounds of the streams and birds.

The cliff dwellers had abandoned their homes and fields by 1300.  Why they left and where they went are not known.  Perhaps they joined other Pueblo Indians to the north or south.

This is a very remote place.  It is about a mile walk from beginning to end (mostly climbing steps, etc.) but very beautiful as you can see.

Up there is where we are headed.

View of the caves from below.

Informative sign along the way!

Getting closer.

Proof that we made it up there!

View from the caves looking back down into the canyon where we followed the trail to get here.

See the ladder - it's either down that or back down the trail.

Chris went first.

Then Judy.

I followed (no picture because I had my phone and Judy's camera batteries had died) and made it down.
Bob made it seem easy!!

 As we made our way down, we could see one of the bridges that we crossed on the way up.

 We made our way down the trail and back to the parking lot.

One final view as we made our way down.

We spent about 3 hours up there and then made our way back to Silver City.  Along the way we found a copper mine that is still in operation today.

When we got back to Silver City, we found the Toad Creek Brewery.

Had some snacks and beer.  Then back to the CG for cards.

The next morning, Wednesday, Bob and Chris headed for Phoenix and we headed for home.

Tucson with the Benson's

On Friday, March 4^th we left Mesa and drove to Tucson to meet up with Bennie and Marie Benson (a couple that we met back in 2011 in Alaska).  We stayed at the Voyager RV Park on the east side of Tucson.

On Saturday morning we drove into Tucson to Old Town and did some walking around – museum, gift shop and some public buildings.

Had a great lunch at a local Mexican restaurant.

Later that afternoon Judy and I visited the Pima Air and Space Museum.  They had over 300 airplanes on display – some indoors and some outdoors.  Very impressive.

Those planes indoors were all in great shape.  Those outdoors were in various stages of readiness.  But they are working on them to get them restored.

Dreamliner here.

Several old Air Force One planes here.

If you are old enough, you may remember these:

 TWA!

After the tour we drove over near the air base and watched some of the airplanes fly around.

Played cards that evening.

On Sunday we drove up to Sabine Canyon which is in the eastern foothills of the Santa Catalina mountain range and is a very popular area  for hiking and exploring.  We toured the 3.8 mile canyon in a tram. It begins at an altitude of 2,800 feet and rises to 3,300 feet at its end.
There were 9 stops going up into the canyon, and, you could get off at any stop and explore and then get back on when the next tram came by.

Winding through the canyon, you have views of the creek, the riparian vegetation, magnificent Saguaros on the canyon walls and towering rock formations.

There were several one lane bridges to cross.

A few areas were popular for swimming, but the water was COLD!

Very nice place, but busy.  Had we known what was all there, we could have brought a lunch and had a picnic, but we didn’t know about it.

On the way back we had some pizza and beer and then drove around the airplane graveyards.  Hard to imagine so many planes being mothballed!

Final stop - Kettle Corn!!

Played cards again that evening.

Left Tucson on Monday morning, bound for Silver City, NM to meet up with Bob and Chris Risberg for a couple of days before heading Home!!