March 10 to 16, 2006
We made our way on north to Elephant Butte which is also the name of a lake that is the largest lake in New Mexico. Elephant is a small town but it and the town right next to it, Truth or Consequences both cater to the snow birds. There are many RV parks in the area. There are several ghost towns and mining towns around this area, also hot springs and many museums. We will be here for a week and plan to take in the sites. The wind blew hard with even harder wind gusts the first four days we were here. So hard we just pretty much stayed home. Yesterday was a very nice day and we went into an area where there are several ghost towns, or nearly so. They are the remains of silver mines in the area. One, Chloride, has a very nice museum. This museum is located in the old Pioneer Store, a general merchandise store that one day just closed up and left everything in the store. It remained there for many years. One of the things that made this museum so very good was a lady who owns it along with her parents. She knows all the history of the area and they have purchased several pieces of property which have many items to add to the museum. She spent some time telling the story of the town and towns’ people. Upon leaving there we drove up a road (trail?) which led to the mines but never did find them. However it was a beautiful drive. Again today the wind blew too hard to go anywhere. We worked on things around the house and walked in the afternoon. Today the weather was great and was a beautiful day to go to Silver City. The mountain vistas were just gorgeous and the highway quite interesting. For anyone who is familiar with Deals Gap road in Tennessee, this road we were on today has many more turns. For those who are not familiar with Deals Gap road, it is a treacherous section of road that bikers like to drive as fast as they can. For about 30 miles, it was turn after turn with 10 to 25 MPH speed limits. It is not a well traveled road which is good. Near Santa Rita is a copper mine and it is huge. Mounds of overburden as high as a mountain and deep deep holes where the copper was removed are along the road we traveled. We would like to come back to this area another time. The city of Silver City is very clean and an enjoyable place to visit with many interesting shops in their “old” downtown. We walked around some and then had to get back on those curvy roads again to make our way home.