Gila National Forest and Cliff Dwellings

Saturday, October 11

We left early this morning headed for the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  According to research it was going to be a 2-3 hr drive from Deming.

The drive up into the Gila National Forest on the way to the dwellings was beautiful.  It was about 9am when we stopped to take this picture on the west side of the road.

This is another stop up the road.  Again we were looking west because of where the sun was.

 This view is facing southeast.  It is about 10:30am.  We were at about 4700 ft elevation.

This is from the same spot as above only facing northeast.  

As we turned to leave the area, we saw this bear scat.  We were glad we did not see the bear.

The white in this picture was a grass or weed.  With the dew on it, it glistened like snow.

More New Mexico blue skies.  We are still headed up in elevation.

I think we have reached about 7200 ft elevation.  We thought the low hanging clouds were pretty.

More low hanging clouds below where we are standing.  

We are at the trail head to the cliff dwellings.  There is a guide at cave 1 that will give up more information than we would get on a self guided tour.  

This is the view up river from the middle of the above bridge.

This is the view down river from the middle of the above bridge.  It appears a fire went through this area also.

We are almost up to the dwellings.  I believe you are seeing cave 1 & 2.

If I remember correctly this is caves 3, 4 & 5.  I think there were actually 6 caves.  We only got to go into 2 of the caves.

This picture and the 2 pictures below are of cave 1.  We did not get to go into cave 1.

The wall to the left side of the picture was rebuild by the historical society to help protect the inside of the dwelling.

They had to half way fill the door/entrance because poachers kept going in.

This is cave 2.  It was the largest cave.  We did climb up and into the cave.

This is looking from inside cave 2 out.

This is from the top of the ladder looking towards 2 other rooms in the cave.

This room had 4 walls that were all plastered over the rock.  It is presumed this was a ceremonial area.  The picture below shows how big the whole room was.

Unfortunately past visitors have scratched names in the walls.  What a shame!

Behind the ceremonial room you can see two other rooms.  Tic walked down to the sign and got a picture of a pictograph in the farthest cave.  This may be considered cave 3 you are looking at.

Here is the pictograph.  According to our guide there are not many pictographs left because they are painted on the rock.  As layers of rock fall off the pictographs are lost.  These natives painted pictures as opposed to etching/carving pictures into the rock.  Carved pictures are called petroglyphs.

Tic took this picture back into the cave from the same point as the picture above.  You can see there are several room inside the main part of the cave.

This was a room they presume was for storage.  This room was loaded with dried ears of corn.  The baskets you see were in this room also.  Look how tiny the corn ears are.

I think this is cave 4.  We got to go in it also.  It was very large also.  They are estimating that about 50 to 60 people lived in these caves.

I think this is cave 5.  We definitely did not go into this cave.  Looks like there are at least 2 rooms here.

I think this is cave 6.  We did not go in it either.  You can see how big it is though.

As we started down the hill, we saw this lizard.

At one point on the trail down we could see the visitor center and its parking lot.  This gives a perspective as to how high we climbed and this is part way down.  Can you imagine living in these cliffs and having to go down to farm corn and get water?

As we got in the car to leave, this lizard was on the rock right in front of the car.  It turns out these lizard are plentiful here.

We took a different route back to Deming.  After we came down out of the mountains we came upon the City of Rocks State Park.  This rock cropping just popped up in the middle of this high valley.  You can see some RVs camped there.

This is just a unique cloud formation we saw as we were getting closer to Deming on the way home.  It was a long but fun day!