Silver City, New Mexico

When you travel you always come across a small town, you might be stopping for gas like we did and looked around and saw a quaint, clean, interesting place to investigate so we did...


This area is noted for its mines, Gold, Silver, Copper, Lead, Zinc. Gold was discovered here in 1860.

Billy the Kid lived here also, around 1873-1875.

This cabin was given to the town by Ron Howard he used it in his film "The missing". It is what you would see in the 1870 style of log homes.

Interesting homes in this community.

The church is St. Vincent de Paul 1874.

This building was the museum for the town.

A hedge of Rosemary was in bloom outside the door, one of my favorite herbs.

A what would a museum be without a statue of the local hero, Billy the Kid!

I purchased small bottles of samples of Gold, Silver, and Copper as a gift for some friends, also had jewelry made by local craftsmen.

When we were leaving I saw this interesting wall decorated with ceramic tiles, love the peek holes in the wall too...

Lots of interesting cafe and shops to explore too.

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

Here we are at the Saguaro National Park, hoping to see the catus in bloom....If you want to learn more about this area check out this web site http://www.saguaro.national-park.com/info.htm#cac


Homer Shantz (pictured ) led the effort to create the Saguaro National Park, thankfully there is people who see the need to protect special places and plants like the ones growing here.

Small Saguaro Catus are happy to grow between limbs of trees for protection till they are able to support themselves.

It is an awesome sight to see these giants growing everywhere, all different shapes.

Look at all the different types of catus living here in this desert.

Cholla one of the more dangerous ones, do not attempt to touch or even brush up against, nasty, and you will have a very painful outcome.

The desert had a lot of rain and small plants were starting to pop up.

I do not have the correct name for this variety of catus, tall lanky, with thorns of course.

It was just beginning to bloom, a small red flower on the end of each arm will appear.

Another Cholla see the yellow flowers just beginning to bloom.

This desert plant reminded me of the Bumble in the cartoon story with Rudolph the red nose reindeer, I can imagine eyes and arms on him...can you??

This is called a Barrel Catus, for good reason the shape of it...surrounded by Prickly Pear Catus....I actually cooked some on our trip, they came without the prickly thorns and sliced thin, I cooked them in a stir-fry, yummy tasted like green beans.

Close up picture of the picky thorns...

Although we had hopes that the desert would be in bloom, we saw lots of buds, but this was the only flower on the floor that we saw.

Lots of creatures live here, it is not a barren place for sure.

Look at this catus, think of how old it is, 150 to 175 years old, it was 75 years old before it started growing arms. This one is lucky, no bird has decided on making it home, or rats have not decided to eat him either. Droughts, and lightning are other hazards these plants face, and of course people.

Thankfully these wonderful plants are protected for all to see and to enjoy. We missed the bloom we were too early, maybe someday we can catch it just right!

Montezuma Well, Arizona

This is an naturally occurring spring in the desert.



This well is on top of a hill, a spring coming out from the earth, a source of life for the Sinagua Indians.


They grew corn, beans, squash and cotton products.




And they lived in the hills above the lake in Stone houses/caves.

The cliff houses were usually one room homes, might have used ladders to reach them.

The water is always the same temp. 75 degrees year round.

They dug a ditch one mile long to irrigate their crops.

Lined with stone, and about three feet deep for their fields.

You can imagine how well their crops grew in the warm waters.

Look at the Arizona Sycamore tree at the edge of the irrigation ditch, look how it grew!

And then they left, Montezuma Castle, and Montezuma Well, no one knows why they left, no written records a mystery to all today.

Walnut Canyon, Arizona

Sorry for the delay in updating, but we sat thru a thunderstorm one evening and I didn't want to be on line during the storm, and then we stayed in some State Parks who do not offer any WIFI, so I am behind in our travels, and will now try to get caught up.





After leaving the Petrified forest we headed for Walnut Canyon National Monument.

This map shows you where the canyon is located and you can see the 8 mile loop
where you can see many caves along the sides of the canyon.


This is a model in the visitor center showing what it might have looked like during the time this area was inhabited. They lived in Caves in the rocks, and farmed the Plateau above.


But to see the canyon you must walk down the stairs!

and more stairs actually 240 of them, take your time and look around as you go and you will see the caves around you. The trail thru the canyon is actually 8 miles, but we were only able to access a mile or so because it was closed due to snow and ice!

Can you imagine seeing people coming and going tending their crops on the upper plateau, had to be sure footed, as not to fall down the canyon.

This sign explains that there was a volcano around the Flag Staff Arizona area and of course people were forced to move to another location, away from the area they had lived in for over 400 years. The time line is 1,000 years ago, and the Hopi people came to this canyon to live.

This is an Alligator Juniper Tree. I am always amazed all the different types of trees and bark, this name really fit the tree.

Now you can understand why it was called that!

The Hopi people found it difficult to live here, weather changes and over population eventually forced them to move south.

This is a look at another cave in the canyon, I wish we could have climbed over to check out each one we saw.

Of course when these caves were found in the 1800's they were looted and some destroyed.
In 1915 President Woodrow Wilson declared this a National Monument protecting this site, check out the pictures showing the people who visited the caves at that time, and showed how careless people were. We will never know what treasures people found and took from sites like this, so much information forever lost.

Today a lot of the caves are broken down, walls knocked down, but you can see how simply they lived.

You are allowed to walk inside of them now, they are empty rooms, but you can see where fires were burned to keep warm on cool evenings, and where they cooked. I took this shot from inside looking out, notice the snow in the forest.

They had protection from the hot heat, and from rain and snow, by the overhanging rock.

It is so special to walk the walk where a thousand years ago people lived in this canyon, you can just imagine how difficult life was. It was all about survival, food, and keeping warm or cool depending on the seasons.

You can see in the middle of these caves a doorway. It is original, it was not damaged, it is the only door that was left untouched by the looters.