Pinos Altos
View out our window Friday morning
Rock City - nice camping spots
the mine (one of many)
OUT AND ABOUT
After our Saturday return from Mexico and our "near incident" in Nogales, we made our way into Saint David for a brief two day stay. Sunday and Monday were used to do our housekeeping chores and adjust our lifestyle back to a more "structured" approach.
In looking back over our Mexican experience, though one week hardly reflects a proper assessment, I think I can summarize in a few short comments the real benefits to our Kino Bay stay. There was no Walmart, Loews, Home Depot or Camping World. There were no business establishments vying for our money. That 14 mile drive over dirt roads to the town of Bahia de Kino was a negative. The lifestyle at Kino Bay was primitive with only electricity to support us (there was water but not drinkable) and a dump station. However, fishing was great, clamming okay and the view of the Sea of Cortez crystal clear and beautiful. Many people with whom we spoke frequent Kino Bay for as much as two or three months during the winter months and it has become their winter "get away". For Ken, Kino Bay was the epitome of his two favorite places, the desert and the ocean. I would return but it will require a "willing" mind set.
Tuesday morning we left Saint David and drove to Silver City. We stopped in Lordsburg for a side trip to a Shakespearean Ghost town that turned out to be closed. Disappointed, we made our way into Silver City and took refuge in a RV Park near town.
Wednesday we did a drive by the Phelps Dodge mine which is enormous and still active as an open pit mine. According to a "trusty" brochure provided by New Mexico information services, the mine supports a modern electrowinning copper recovery plant producing plates of .999 copper. We had hoped that there might be a mine tour or at least some background on the history of the mine but alas, Phelps Dodge offered no such welcome to discerning tourists. After lunch we drove to Pinos Altos, approximately six miles from Silver City and just above the Continental Divide where we enjoyed a brief respite into that town's past. According to a brochure provided by the local Chamber of Commerce, gold was discovered in this area by two Forty-Niner prospectors from California. However, there is a legend of an earlier Mexican settlement called Pinos Altos, from which gold was sent to Chihuahua in 1837, according to records in Mexico. Pinos Altos Town Co. was incorporated in 1868 and in 1869, it was made the county seat of Grant Co. According to the brochure, gold is still panned in near by Bear Creek.
Thursday was a "snow day" and our visit to the Cave dwellings had to be postponed. The day was spent watching the snow fall, reading and playing games. We have television but our satellite does not work here and we are limited to the viewing opportunities of the citizenry which consists of old time television, three stations -- CBS, ABC and NBC. Daytime television was not a chosen alternative and we caught up with "laziness" as if we had done anything else during the past several weeks. Late afternoon we returned to Pinos Altos where the snow capped trees and floral was strikingly beautiful in its winter wardrobe.
Friday morning we awakened to two inches of snow on the ground with more falling. It was a cold wintery day. Our planned trip to the cliff dwellings was abandoned. The road was closed. As the clouds broke and the snow turned to a light rain, we drove out to Hurley, an abandoned mining town that reminded me of pictures from Applachia. From Hurley, we visited the City of Rocks, a New Mexico State Park. Theory is that these formations were thrown 180 miles from a volcano, near Albuquerque. It is said that the fury of the volcano was 1000 times greater than the St Helena eruption. Leaving the City of Rocks, we drove through the byways into the Mimbres Valley where we stopped at a local restaurant for lunch. It was a one person operation with the friendly owner serving as waitress, cook, and dish washer. We learned that this picturesque valley is a favorite tourist area in the summer and does a brisk weekend trade year round. Our self guided tour would have had us going over the mountain to the Gila Cliff dwellings but alas, the road was closed by the snowfall. From Mimbres Valley, we back tracked to the road to the Santa Rita/China Mines Open Pit Copper Mine, the oldest active mine in the southwest. The mine itself is now operated jointly by Phelps Dodge/Mitsubishi. Giant sized machines scoop the ore from the earth and huge 200-ton ore trucks transport it to the reduction mill to the southwest of the pit. As we returned to Silver City, we acknowledged that the Gila Cliff dwellings did not make our "dance card" on this visit.
I have concluded that I will soon complete, my apprenticeship as a geologist. We have visited enough gold, copper, silver and other mining operations to do me a lifetime. These visits also produce a certain amount of internal sadness and reflection. The closed mines reflect the reality of our limited resources and the remaining operations provide insight into the enormous cost of tapping those resources. Further, it is depressing to drive through once thriving mining towns now abandoned and in disrepair. It provides reason for pause.
There you have it - another week out and about with Ken and Pat.
Have a good week everyone.
