Day One, Monday, Sept 29: El Paso, Ft. Stockton, Las Cruces, Deming,
Hurley, Bayard, Gila National Forest .
Coming
out of El Paso, general dirtiness, feed lots—lots of feed lots—and dirty lookin’
countryside. Traffic not bad on
I-10. Big mountains up close to town in
El Paso. Had to go through Border Patrol Checkpoint, a permanent set-up like a
highway toll plaza. No problem. “Have a
good one,” said rough, professional-looking fellow in sunglasses. Entered New Mexico without really noticing
it. Las Cruces not impressive, junky and dirty looking. Some barren but pretty mountains around L.C.,
in between there and Deming. Got off I-10 and onto 180 at Deming. New Mexico
folks do seem friendly. Trailer homes
everywhere. Pecan or some other kind of
orchards, too.
180
up from Deming. Good scenery. Big faraway mountains, close-up prairie. Stopped at Cook’s Peak, 8,500 feet, took a
few photos. Then stopped at Hurley at Crossroads Café for dinner. Nobody there
but us, at 7 p.m. But they close at 8.
Two friendly women our age were working there. Got a good chili relleno. Hatch is near Hurley, so I wanted to try
something with a green chili pepper.
Drove
to various potential campsites in the dark.
First one had some campers, looked okay to me, but we kept going. Second one looked, Mesa, looked even better
to me, but not to Wooley. He pointed out we could come back. Third place recommended by policeman we saw
at the restaurant, the Forks campground by Gila River, looked not good at all,
like a maze of gravel roads. So we travelled on, right up to the Mogollon Cliff
Dwellings area. I thought this was not
such a good idea, since it was late, 10 pm or so. We found a couple of campsites, Upper and
Lower Scorpion (very inviting name, right), each with a big paved parking area.
Nobody was at Lower Scorpion so we parked there, set up camp, built a fire.
I
didn’t like the parking lot aspect of it, but it was actually a good
campground, and was secluded—only a few cars passed on the road the next
morning, and nobody came and parked in the lot (lots of people showing up there
was my worry) until about noon, when a couple came and looked around the
campsites and the woman apparently took the only bar of soap that was in the
latrine.
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During
the morning we cooked and ate breakfast then climbed the small mountain or hill
behind the campground and took photos, then packed up and drove to Gila Cliff
Dwellings visitor center and went to the cliff dwellings. Ohio women retirees
worked there as seasonal live-in (not in the cliff dwellings!) guides/rangers.
The visitor center had a different but still friendly crew of two men. There were no trash receptacles. Signs
explained why not: people are expected to “pack out” their own trash. A good policy!
Mogollon Cliff Dwellings, New Mexico. Photos by Jeff Wooley.
The Mogollon Indian cave dwellings are in the Gila National Forest in western New Mexico.
Sometime later in the trip, Wooley used his timer setting on his new digital camera, bought for this trip, to record us having dinner next to the pop-up camper. He wore several hats on the trip, or caps, while I only wore one. Or sometimes I just wore a shadow across my face.
