We didn’t make it to City of Rocks State Park that night. When the dust storm was done we got on the road, but it was still very windy, so we pulled off at a Walmart less than 10 miles from where we’d waited out the storm. Quite a few RVs were parked in the Walmart lot, so we knew we weren’t the only ones playing it safe and not driving in the wind. Since we already had the campsite at City of Rocks, we knew we could get there any time and not have to wait until their late afternoon check in time to park, so we got on the road early the next day. We stopped for fuel, and when Tom talked to the attendant, he found out that winds at the airport had been clocked at 95mph. Crazy!
City of Rocks State Park is the kind of place that makes me wish I’d grown up in New Mexico so my family could have gone there for vacation or, even better, lived close enough that we could have gone every weekend. The City of Rocks is a huge formation that you can wander through and climb on pretty much forever. Even better, they’ve designed the campground so that campsites are tucked into the rocks, which made us regret getting an electric site since it would have been much more fun to camp in the rocks. However, the temperatures dipped into the mid-20s, so it was nice to plug in our electric heater and let it run all night.
City of Rocks State Park is the kind of place that makes me wish I’d grown up in New Mexico so my family could have gone there for vacation or, even better, lived close enough that we could have gone every weekend. The City of Rocks is a huge formation that you can wander through and climb on pretty much forever. Even better, they’ve designed the campground so that campsites are tucked into the rocks, which made us regret getting an electric site since it would have been much more fun to camp in the rocks. However, the temperatures dipped into the mid-20s, so it was nice to plug in our electric heater and let it run all night.
We left City of Rocks State Park around 8AM because we had been told that while the drive to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was less than 50 miles, it was very curvy and very hilly. We had heard the same thing from multiple people, and they weren’t kidding! We started the morning at around 4500 feet of elevation, and to get to Gila Cliff Dwellings we went through a pass that topped out at 7440 feet - and most of that climb was done in less than 5 miles. However, we were glad to take it slow and enjoy the ever changing scenery since the route leads from the desert into pine forest as the elevation increases. Because there was a lot of snow at the higher elevations, there was also a lot of water and runoff on the road, which made icy patches. They were short and didn’t give us any trouble, but we definitely hadn’t planned on driving on ice.
The Gila Cliff Dwellings were fun to explore. The NPS has created a path of about a mile which winds through the valley, up the hill to the cliff dwellings, and then back by going behind the dwellings and down to the parking area. The whole route is beautiful, and the preservation and reconstruction of the actual dwellings is, as expected, quite well done.
We left Gila Cliff Dwellings and drove back through the pass on our way to a BLM campground on the other side of Silver City. However, as we were approaching Silver City, we saw miles and miles of mined hills, all crawling with mining equipment and gigantic trucks. We ;then found an overlook with informational signs for the Santa Rita Copper Mine, so we pulled in to look and take photos. We were very lucky, because a man who works for one of the companies that provides the drills was there, so he shared a lot of information with us. Some of it was technical details, but some was more philosophical. For example, he pointed out that the whole world is trying to go green and make everything electric rather than fossil fuel powered, but most of the copper mined out of the hills is used for electrical equipment. The copper mining process is obviously not geared towards conservation. Besides the stripped mountains, we were also told that the copper is extracted by putting the rocks in leach fields and bathing them with cyanide. And, the gigantic trucks running the ore back and forth 24/7 definitely aren’t running on electricity. I’ll have to do more research before I form an opinion, but it was definitely food for thought.
These hills went on for miles and miles.
This is one tire from the truck in the first photo. Those trucks are BIG.
We left the copper mine overlook and went to a free established campground in the Gila National Forest between Silver City and Lordsburg. The campground is on the Continental Divide Trail and gets some tent camping through-hikers and -bikers, but it’s also very convenient for RVs. We found a level spot and took the dogs for a short walk to enjoy the view from the trail.
As we were doing our normal evening stuff, we took a look at the next day’s weather for the area. We were dismayed to find out that yet another high wind advisory was starting the next morning at 8AM, which would make leaving difficult. We were also dismayed to find out that a Winter Storm Warning had also been issued, and the area was expecting up to 8” of snow the next afternoon and evening, along with temperatures in the teens. Tom suggested going to bed immediately so we could get up and evacuate by 3AM, but I persuaded him to move the departure time back to 6AM so we could eat, get some sleep, and get up around 5AM rather than the middle of the night. That’s what we did, and we beat the wind out of New Mexico. We also decided to skip a couple of sites we were going to see in eastern Arizona, and we headed directly to Tucson, where we pulled in shortly after 9AM. We did some grocery shopping, went for a hike, and found some BLM land just outside the city to park on for the night.
We had a great hike through a saguaro forest and around some hills. The dogs couldn’t go, but it was for their own good as the very rocky trails would have shredded their poor feet.
This is pretty crappy BLM land, with a few campers and overlanders, but also a few more rundown rigs that seem to be permanent despite the supposed 14-day limit. It’s just a big dirt parking lot, and I’m concerned about taking the dogs out because of the amount of garbage and broken glass. However, it’s a free place to sit to ride out the wind storm and the snow, which are both forecast to be much more mild here than in New Mexico.