January 24,2011 Silver City, New Mexico

Yesterday, Sunday, we left Van Horn, Texas and continued our travels across I-10 and passing through El Paso and , finally, out of the state of Texas into the state of New Mexico. At Deming, N.M. we left I-10 and traveled north to the town of Silver City and checked into the Rose Valley RV Ranch. We did drive through the town which had most everything closed. We found a car wash to wash our dirty car and then a restaurant for dinner.
Today we drove north to the Whitewater Picnic Area and Catwalk National Recreation Trail. The Catwalk is a metal walkway suspended above the Whitewater Creek through the Whitewater Canyon. Back in the 1890's gold and silver was discovered in the Mogollon Mountains. The milling process needed water so a pipeline was constructed to channel the water from the Whitewater Creek to the mill about 3 miles. The workers that walked along the pipeline doing maintenance called this structure the "Catwalk". After 10 years the mill closed and the pipeline was dismantled. In the 1930's the Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt the Catwalk as a recreation attraction. We hiked the 1.1 mile trail through the canyon and then back. The weather was perfect with clear blue skies and bright sunshine and temperature in the 50's at most. The canyon was rather breezy in some areas. We continued on further north to the ghost town os Mogollon which is located in a narrow valley between 2 mountains. It was obvious that the sun is unable to shine on this town as there was a lot of snow around the buildings and beside the road. A few people live here but it is really isolated. Butch Cassidy and his gang supposedly hung out in this area.
Returning to Silver City we stopped at the Red Barn restaurant for dinner. We both got the soup and salad. The soup that we got was a green chile and chicken soup, this was a cheesy cream soup with lots of chicken and green chiles with some heat to them, really delicious.