Day #51

We decided to leave Catalina State Park for New Mexico this morning. Since we wanted to get there before dark, we were ready by 9:30. It seemed like a long drive, but I occupied myself polishing the brass on Blaze’s halter, bridle and breast collar. The breast collar had been leaching green onto his pale palomino shoulders. I wanted to fix that.

There were many things that I remembered from three years ago when we were here. The change from high desert to conifer covered mountains was one. Surprisingly, it was much greener down in Arizona compared to New Mexico except for the conifer trees. There were a lot of yellow flowers covering the pastures as we drove through, but little green grass.

As we got to the other side of Silver City, we could see the huge bare mountains where they were mining copper. I read that the Mexicans were the original miners and would smelt the ore and carry it by burros back down to Mexico. The mine is called Santa Rita Mine and there is a

ghost town near it where the miners used to live.

The rock formations here are beautiful. They look like spires pointing up to heaven. Many log cabins are built in the forests around them. The road to the Gila cliff dwelling area is twisty and turning. It is very steep, and we could smell our brakes on the way down the mountains and see our engine edging to overheating climbing up.
On our way, we saw a herd of goats in the road. They were traveling down a mountain with their guard dog. There were no humans in sight, but the goats turned off the road and went into a pasture herded by the dog. There must have been two dozen of them.

We arrived at Woody’s corrals at 6:00. There are four huge corrals that could hold a half dozen horses each. There is a large tank in the middle that allows horses in each of the corrals to reach in and drink without having to fight. You fill the tank with water from a pump

located in the center of the tank.
Even though I was tired, I cleaned out the huge stall I was putting Blaze in. That corral had not been cleaned out in some time and Blaze kept eating the old straw in it. We could see that the horsemen had just been tossing the manure to the outside of the corral. Last time we were here, it was much cleaner and there was a manure pile off to the side. We wondered if anyone even came down with a loader and cleaned it out anymore.
I fixed supper while Dan took care of feeding the horses. Supper was chili over baked potatoes with cheese and sour cream, sour dough bread and rice pudding for dessert. As I type this at 7:30, Dan is asleep in the chair.
I am looking forward to riding the three main trails over the next three days and specially to exploring the cliff dwelling again.
So, tomorrow will be a fun day.
God bless, Pam