Gila Cliff Dwellings

The Gila Cliff Dwellings are north of Silver City, New Mexico.  We camped at the Silver City KOA, which was a very nice spot, with great owners.  The drive up to the Cliff Dwellings was long but not difficult. We wound through pastoral valleys, past lakes and pines and ranches. And up and down a breathtaking ridge, if we were not used to the cliffs of Highway One in California, I would have been terrified. Well, maybe just a bit nervous...

You can just see one dwelling in the arch on the left.

Then we hiked for an easy half hour up to the dwellings themselves. 

We saw a few petroglyphs, but mostly were just in awe of the construction and location. Russ said if I exclaimed "Wow!" one more time, he was going to remove his hearing aid.   Holly ate his other one back in Tucson, so he only heard half my "wows" anyway!

Some of the walkways were right on the edge!

The dwellings were built around 1270 AD and abandoned around 50 years later.  There are quite a number of "rooms" which we were told housed about 40-50 families. 

We are standing on the ledge you can see in the picture above.  Do I look nervous?  I sure was!

This is how we climbed down to reach the trail to go back to the truck.  I made Russ go first, of course.
Just an awesome experience!!