Tomorrow will mark the halfway point in our stay here at the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Is time flying, or what? TBG is more of a stats-keeper than I, tracking gas mileage, battery levels, money — YAWN! I keep a running total of the only really important number, which is our hiking mileage. Mostly I do it so that if I’m ever feeling guilty about having a lazy slug day, I can flip open my little journal to check the current dirt-chasing tally and sit back down worry-free.
We did two hikes this week, bringing our total formal hiking mileage at GICL to 68. By formal I mean only the distance we covered on actual hikes. I have also been keeping a count of our trips up the trail to the dwellings for work. I have made the one-mile loop nine times, and TBG has been up six. He racks up a lot more biking mileage than me, but I don’t keep a tab on that number.
Our first hike of the week was to Melanie Hot Springs. It started down the highway at the nearby Grapevine Campground, but there was no official trail sign for it. It began directly in the river.
TBG insisted he told me that this 3.5 mile hike included eight river crossings. He may have told someone, but it wasn’t me, and I had worn long pants. Would I have worn long pants if he had told me? I think not. Did he wonder why I was wearing long pants when eight river crossings were in our immediate future? Apparently not. I rest my case.
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| Don’t talk to this woman, she’s busy angrily crossing a river. |
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| Some of the trail was nice and wide open. |
Some was overgrown and needed to be beaten for snakes. At least that’s how we do it. We didn’t see any, so our method must have some merit.
No sign pointed to the hot springs, but TBG’s GPS zeroed it in for us. There were two pools, one covered in a raft of bright green algae, the larger, deeper side a bit overgrown on the edges and with an occupied spider web strung across it.
TBG brushed the web aside and got in. I abstained. I briefly considered running off with his clothing as payback for neglecting to tell me not to wear long pants.
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| If the bottom right corner of this frame was an arrow, it would be pointing directly at the hot springs. |
We decided to walk in the river rather than on the overgrown section of the trail for part of the way back.
As with other hikes in the area, the views were the best from midstream. Even though we were walking in the refreshing water, TBG kept asking me if I was hot. As it turns out, that was code for “Let’s take a swim!” We made our way down-river and around a few bends to be out of view of the trail and find a suitable pool in which to dip. TBG was already in the water, and I was about to be, when he pointed downstream and shouted, “Look! A lizard is swimming across!” I grabbed my camera, zeroed in on its general direction, and hoped for the best. Only later, after we downloaded and zoomed in on the photo, did we see that it wasn’t a lizard at all.
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| It was a chimunk doing the breaststroke! |
We had a wonderful, cooling float in the river before re-locating the trail and heading back. Though this hike hadn’t started on the best of terms for me, it ended up placing in our top three overall so far.
Our second hike of the week required about a 15-minute drive down the highway. A sweet combination of cooler temps, overcast skies, no elevation gain, mostly smooth trail, and zero other people put this hike in our top three as well.
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| No trail name on the sign? No problem! |
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| Look at me not sweating buckets! |
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| Look at TBG with dry feet! |
TBG was in hog heaven, too, snapping photos left and right of all the giant alligator junipers along both sides of the trail.
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| Yes, a bear does. Thanks for asking! |
4 ¾ miles brought us to the junction with the Apache Creek Trail and was the obvious place for our lunch break.
With this week’s hikes placing in our top three so far, it will be hard to beat during the second half of our time here, but we intend to try.
COMMENTS
Chasing Dirt Thank you so much! TBG is quite contrite about not warning me and has assured me it [probably] won’t happen again 🙂
Those alligator junipers really are unique, aren’t they? That whole area
was such a lovely woods to hike through. When it’s not too hot, and the
trail is smooth and mostly flat like that, it makes it much easier to
have energy. The only thing missing from that particular hike was
critters!
Chasing Dirt I love nothing more than a hike with a defined destination, and this hot spring certainly fit that bill. I will definitely share this with visitors, but it’s funny you ask because one of our rangers said she’d like us to hike out again with her since she’s not been able to locate it yet herself. It’s listed in the hiking books and on All Trails (I think that’s what TBG was using that day for GPS.) With the low overall visitor rate here and what we know of peoples’ inability to find other places we’ve clearly directed them to, I have no worries that these springs will be overrun any time soon 😀 It is a constant internal battle, to be sure, of whether to share the beautiful places — oh, how I empathize with that!
Chasing Dirt Oh, believe me, I let him know!! 😀 It’s been a little hotter than I would like, but there is no perfect place, and we are glad to be near water to wash away our troubles. The greenery is definitely nice, especially in this climate. I can’t imagine if we weren’t up here at 6-7000′ — ugh!
And have I told you how much I love that you write about your cranky moments with such refreshing honesty? You make me laugh. Time is definitely flying—I can’t believe you guys are halfway through your time there! Stay cool. :-))
Chasing Dirt Isn’t that amazing that the little chipmunk had modest little shorts like mine?! 😉 I think if someone had asked me, I would’ve said that chipmunks can swim BUT in researching that, I did learn that squirrels also can, they just don’t like to. That made me laugh! It leaves us with the question, though, why did the chipmunk cross the river?
Ha, my cranky moments! Thank you for your kind words regarding that. We are so fortunate to be able to live this lifestyle, but I want folks to know it’s still real life and not all a grand problem-free adventure. As Mr. Walsh would say, “I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.”
I, too, can’t believe you’re at the halfway mark. I’m working on fall reservations as we speak. Suddenly, October doesn’t seem all that far away.
Enjoy!
Chasing Dirt I know, right?! What is wrong with us (me) being cranky? I always regret when I’ve wasted time being like that, but I can’t seem to avoid it completely. I guess we’d never know the good times if we had no bad times, but still… I am glad that I didn’t go the whole hike that way, and we were able to really enjoy it. The water has been our saving grace this summer.
I, too, am working on more route-planning and reservations, and you are right, time is a strange thing. Planning ahead is good and necessary and, sometimes, even fun (I hope you are having some fun picking and choosing and getting excited for the sights you’ll see, with good internet to do it and reliable reviews to help you out!)
TBG can be a great teacher with his pointing skills.
You certainly have made good time there and because you are being adventurous and having a good time time time went swiftly by.
Did you lend your blue underwear to the chipmunks? ha ha ha
Chasing Dirt Whaaaat? Do you just not like the
thought of wet shoes or being in a river or do you not swim at all? This
is an interesting new tidbit!
Hahaha, smack! Yes, indeedy!
I think I did too good a job computer-drawing in the name of that trail
on the sign. It looks real, but the actual sign was blank. I knew as
soon as I saw it what I was going to do for the blog post and made TBG
do his sign duty as usual. I think we can safely say he is a
sign-pointing expert!
As a matter of fact, I *did* lend that poor little nude chipmunk my swimmin’ shorts 😀