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Published: July 17th 2019
The hotel we are staying in houses a number of workers. We know that a few are doing some kind of road work, as evidenced by their trucks and the equipment in the parking lot. Not sure how others may be employed. In any event, they were up before dawn and off to work, so we were awake early, as well. Not to say that they were noisy. They were not. But we are light sleepers in hotel rooms, and we heard their alarms go off and their trucks start up when they left. So, we made an effort to make use of that to plan ahead on our trip. Our plans are still in flux and I am not sure we made much progress. But at 8 AM we knew we had to get going, since we had a lot of driving to do today. At 8:15 and 80 degrees, we drove out of the parking lot and headed east. Yes, I said east. I know…we just came from there. And this is evidence that our planning is a bit askew this time around. Blame it on old age, I guess. We headed down the same road that brought us
to Silver city, all the way back to Las Cruces and then north to White Sands National Monument. I guess we should have stopped in Las Cruces last night, but that’s what I mean by askew. It took us 2.5 hours to get to our destination.
On route we noticed some unusual mountains off on the horizon to the east. Unusual, because the tops are ragged and jagged like a serrated knife. When we turned north, the range was right there to our right for a number of miles, shrouded in an early morning haze. A sign told us that we were passing the Organ Mountain National Monument, something we knew nothing about until it was right in front of us. Research tells me it was established in 2014. There did not seem to be any access to get any closer to them. Actually we were quite close already. So, chalk that up to another National Monument visited.
After passing through this mountain range, we continued east to White Sands. (For anyone who is not aware…national parks are authorized by Congress and national monuments by the President. They are all wonderful.) This park is all about the sand.
The white sand. I don’t know any golfers who would not want to have this in their sand traps. It was pure and soft and powdery. And here in the park, they treat it like snow. No fooling. They plow it. The roadsides have sand banks that look just like snow banks after the plow goes by. And people slide down the dunes on saucers, like we did as kids on snowy hillsides. The only difference is that it has desert plants growing out of it in places. We have driven through a lot of deserts and never seen anything like this. And, believe it or not, the road looks just like an iced over road after the plowing is done and the cars have packed it down. But let me say this…we knew it was the desert today. It was 100 degrees. We took a walk on a boarded path that had us walking almost half a mile and when I got back to the car, a long drink of water was a must. The air is dry and hot and it really sucks the moisture out of you.
After seeing the whole park, we took a different
route back to Silver City. We read about a mine that was a must see, so we drove north on I-25 and , instead of going around the mountains, we went right over them. What ride. It was S turn after S turn after S turn with a lot of hairpin turns mixed it. We did this for about 60 miles, at about 10-20 miles an hour the entire way. And as nature would have it, part of the drive was in the rain. This took us thorough the Gila National Forest. And the views were spectacular, with imposing jagged rock walls leaning over the road where they had been cut to make way for the road. It never ceases to amaze me how trees grow out of rocks, but they do.
After emerging from the forest, we made a turn and there was the mine. The Santa Rita Mine, now known as the Chino Mine. It is an open-pit copper mine and the walls are a menagerie of orange colors in striations of yellow and orange with multiple ledges, apparently where the trucks go. We did see one truck way up near the top. Check out the photos.
As we were arriving, there was a long live of pickups waiting to check out of the facility and we knew that their shift had just ended.
We got back to the hotel at about 4:30 and settled in for the night. Tomorrow, we head up to Santa Fe for three days.
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Norman Darrer
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Santa Fe
One of our Favorite Cities; an artist colony town. We have 3 paintings from a Woman Painter, Sara M. Novenson, who does unbelievable landscape series, bursting with color! Her studio was on the main st of the artist studios.Have fun in a fun place....