Our trailer is positioned a bit differently in this park so
the rising sun isn’t hitting the vent as it did in Picacho. Consequently, because the trailer isn’t as
bright, I’m not waking up as early as I have been. So it seems I’ll have to set the alarm to get
up before 8 a.m.
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We decided to go to the Gila Cliff Dwellings today, which
meant riding some of the same route as yesterday. Since it was more direct, it made sense to
tackle Hwy 15 first. Fifty miles up Hwy
15 and we’d be at the visitor’s center.
So we reversed our route. In
Pinos Altos, there is a sign warning that for the next 18 miles there was no
center line on the road. So what that
told me was that it was 18 miles from where I was to the intersection of 15 and
35….18 miles of curvy winding road with no center line. Believe me, I was counting those mile
markers. It almost seemed like riding it
today was a bit more stressful than yesterday.
Maybe that’s because yesterday I was ignorant and today I knew exactly
what I was getting myself into. Kim rode
lead and used the communicators as a warning system for me…telling me of approaching
cars, upcoming hairpin turns, gravel in the road, etc. It was a good system as long as he didn’t get
out of range. At one point, he said “I’m
putting it in creeper gear so you can catch up.” Creeper gear?! J
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So far in our exploring around the area, it’s all about
getting up one mountain, only to be confronted with another. And knowing that when we reached our
destination, those mountains would still have to be reckoned with on the way
back.
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Heading north on 15 this morning, there were times when the
sun reflected off the information screen on the bike. If I sat a bit taller in the saddle, it might
not have been an issue; however, it was an added nuisance that I didn’t need on
those roads. But as I think about it, it
was probably the curvy nature of the road that kept it from being a constant irritation, so I should put
that in the win column for the twisties!!
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The Gila Cliff Dwellings are part of the National Park Service and it is actually considered a monument, not a park. We parked at the bottom of a very high cliff, knowing that somewhere up there were the caves that comprised the Gila Cliff Dwellings and also that we’d have to walk up there if we wanted to see them. Just a mile loop, with about a 200 foot rise in elevation, we were told by the park ranger. This section here is not so bad…a pretty even walking path through some beautiful scenery…this section here is where the climbing gets tougher, but don’t worry, there are benches so you can sit and catch your breath. He wasn’t kidding about ‘the climbing gets tougher’ part….at least from my perspective…Kim seemed to breeze right along. We had been given a guide to the caves which explained what we were seeing in each one. There was a park ranger up in the biggest cave area to answer questions, etc. Wonder if when a ranger is assigned to a particular park or monument, he or she has to study up on it and then take a test to prove their knowledge of that park. Anyway, this park ranger was very knowledgeable even though she’d only been there a few weeks. There were some pictographs up higher in a couple of the caves. The ranger then told us about another canyon down the road that had pictographs at eye level. She gave detailed directions and we made a plan to stop on our way back to camp.
 |
| We called this the Centipede. |
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Webster’s dictionary defines pictograph as 1: an ancient or prehistoric drawing or painting on a rock wall…2: one of the symbols belonging to a pictorial graphic system…3: a diagram representing statistical data by pictorial forms.
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 |
| Male figure with horns or bunny ears? |
The park ranger, Lanita, gave very good landmark directions to the 2nd set of pictographs: ‘On 35, about a mile past Lake Roberts, the Spirit Canyon Lodge will be on your left, across the road there’s a pull off and a sign for trail 4202C. Take the trail…don’t worry about the other trails shooting off from it, just stay on the main trail…it’ll cross a dry creek bed a couple of times. You can even just walk up the creek if you want. Go past the sign about the Antiquities Act. About a ½ mile in, you’ll find the pictographs on the side of a cliff to your left.’ We were able to find them with little difficulty. I was excited to find some faded red pictographs on the side of a cliff early on but they weren’t the pictures that she had showed us, so we continued onward. Just down around a bend there they were...numerous pictographs, some faded but most still see-able. In fact, if looked at from an angle, they really popped off the rock face. Now to get to this point, we had walked along a path, through a very rocky dry creek bed and played mountain goat by climbing up a steep rocky incline. Add that to the climbing we had done to get to the cliff dwellings and my legs are killing me…both muscles and joints!! There’s ibuprofen in my future, that’s for sure.
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We took Hwy 35 to finish the loop back to camp…and just as we were making the turn off 15, Kim noticed a ghost bike at the back of a roadside pull off. There was no doubt as to who the bike was representing as the name was clearly written on the cross bar. Rob Oakes, 1942-2013. I was curious as to his story, but also about the letters NMTS that were on the water bottle and the front wheel. What did they mean? This is an excerpt of an article written by Rosalie Rayburn, staff writer for the Albuquerque Journal:
William ‘Rob’ Oakes
On the last morning that he rode,
William “Rob” Oakes, 70, powered his Specialized bicycle up the hill out of
Silver City and passed other cyclists years his junior with his signature smile
and wave.
His fellow riders in the New Mexico
Touring Society bike club kidded him about his lean frame saying he could climb
like a goat and descend like a feather.
A resident of Placitas,
Oakes died May 11 of injuries after he was struck by a pickup truck on N.M. 15
below White Horse Mesa, a few miles outside of Silver City. He was one of 54
cyclists from the club on their annual two-day Gila Inner Loop Tour. State
Police are investigating the case.
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The setting of the sun is relative to whatever is in front of you. Eating supper at the Restaurant Del Sol tonight, the sun was setting behind a nearby mountain. However, when we headed down Hwy 152 and got beyond that mountain, we found that the sun hadn’t set at all. In fact, it was just at a position that made driving very difficult. I had my googles on, my helmet’s sun visor pulled down and my clutch hand up to help ward off the glare. It was very tedious driving in those conditions. If I had to make a choice between the morning glare on the information screen and the glare of the setting sun, I’d go with the morning glare. Piece of cake compared to tonight.
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Rode 120 miles
today
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