Silver City, NM

We took the Pete V Domenici Memorial Highway or State Highway 9 from El Paso to Silver City. I think we only saw one other car and two border patrol cars during this scenic two hour drive. The desert out there is different than what we're used to in Arizona or Utah. There is tall grass and big globe like cactus trees that made us feel like we were in a Dr. Seuss book. Jake was reminded of something he read that talked about the early American Indians and how the desert grass was so lush that it grew tall enough to reach the belly of their horses. There is hardly any land like this left because we graze every open pasture nowadays. We drove into a little town called Columbus where we stopped at a pawn shop. The man asked us if we had anything in our car we wanted to trade in and we told him that we didn't really have anything valuable with us. We noticed his coin collection and told him we had was a fifty cent piece that an old man in Texas had given us for change. He said if it was older than 1963 or something like that, then he would want it... It wasn't that old. 40 more miles down the road we ran into the next little town. I like the back roads.

When stayed with a nice couple in Silver City for 3 or 4 nights and enjoyed a day trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. It was a windy, 45 mile adventure through the mountains and our car started to smell really bad. We thought it was going to explode, but it turns out Jake was just riding the brakes too much. Scary, and then funny. The cliff dwellings were pretty awesome. It was amazing to see caves up in the sides of huge cliffs that were perfectly in tact and that had been homes of the local people hundreds of years ago.

Then we took a hike along the continental divide. The weather was perfect and the sights were breathtaking. Jake found some interesting pieces of cactus that were dead and dried out. He thought they would make some cool looking art pieces, like a hat rack or maybe even some kind of percussion instrument. I started to notice some pretty pieces of white quartz scattered among the other rocks. My mom is a lover of rocks with stripes or sparkles or ones that are just in a neat shape. So Jake carried cactus on his shoulders and I carried rocks in all my pockets the entire way down the mountain. We are such weirdoes. And my husband is so good looking!

There was also a crazy event that occurred while we were in Silver City but Jake tells the story sooooo much better than I do. So once again, I'll see if I can talk him into sharing his creative writing skills and do just one post for us! Otherwise, all you blog readers get another mediocre Cody story.