Silver City / Gila Cliffs

Silver City / Gila Cliffs, a set on Flickr.

From Tuscon, we hopped just over the border to a funky town in New Mexico called Silver City. We came into the city (loose terminology) figuring that it would be cheap and that motels would be plentiful and vacant- which was not true. We couldn't Priceline anything and the cheapest option was a nasty motel on a highway for around $100. In disbelief, I decided to search on Google for 'hotel silver city' and the Palace Hotel popped up- which was not featured on any of the sites we'd been searching. I called, they had a room for $50 and the guy on the phone was super friendly. Sold.

The hotel was only a few blocks from where we were parked, frantically searching, but the drive there took us into a different world-- out of dilapidated-rural-america-truck-stop-land and into hippie-historical-downtown Silver City. We ate at Isaac's Bar which had an amazing beer selection and turned in pretty early. In the morning we woke up to smell of coffee wafting into the room. The hotel reminded me of places I stayed in Germany years ago. Small rooms with a community breakfast area and self-serve breakfast with toast, juice, hardboiled eggs, coffee and whole fruit. We ate and explored the city that morning, stocking up at the local food coop and grabbing a 1/2 lb of tortillas and some green salsa from a little tortillera on the corner of W Texas and N 7th.

The town is a cute one, filled with art and people who look you in the eye to say good morning. I would go back.

That afternoon we headed up the road to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It's only a few miles from Silver City, but you average 20mph on the winding roads, so it takes awhile to get there. On the way you pass a private hot springs area and a visitor's center where you can find information on the different hot springs in the park. Unfortunately for us, few of them had positive reviews around this time of year, and the ones that did required several hours of hiking and many river crossings. So, we opted to do a short hike to the dwellings and take off.

The 5 dwellings include many small, interconnected rooms where they think 10-15 families lived in the late 1200s. You can still see the remains of some of the original wood used as roofs and there are also a few petroglyphs and hand prints that remain on the walls. The hand prints really got me.

xoxo
H