Canyons and Ghost Towns

After our first few trips to the Gila National Forest, we feared that our blog would be full of endless vistas of empty landscapes framed by desert mountains! But never fear! On our last few trips we discovered a whole new side of Gila National Forest, lots of narrow canyons and one ghost town!

Last weekend, we went on a hike that was actually very close to the cliff dwellings of our first trip, but very different, exploring the “Middle Fork” trail. It started out pastoral enough, on a lovely trail through the forest near a dry river bed.

But after that it quickly narrowed into a long slot canyon (that was very hard to capture in photos!) only to open on a truly beautiful spot on the corner of the canyon and the West Fork of the Gila River

If we’d kept on hiking another two miles, we’d have come to some hot springs, but figured we’d leave that for a day when we had more time.

One more surprise, on the way back, we came across a Tarrantula, which are native to New Mexico and while they sting, apparently no worse than a bee sting, but they look pretty scary!

This weekend, we went to a different part of Gila National Forest, this one near some old mining towns. The first part of the day was also dominated by a slot canyon, but on this one, they had a suspended cat bridge that had been built on infrastructure used to pipe in water while there had been active mining in the area. It was really nice and made nicer by the fall leaves and golden colors of the day.

After the catwalk, we then went on a long, windy drive up the mountains to an old mining town, that has since been abandoned but preserved. It was really crazy!

The last photo was literally a door in the rock wall of the mountain, where the miners entered for their days work!

Needless to say, after all these hikes, were pretty wiped, but on sunny days our porch is a lovely place to hang out and relax, here’s Cindy making herself comfortable