Our Third New Mexico Discovery Tour

When leaving Mesa, Arizona to drive to Silver City, New Mexico, we were totally unprepared for the beauty of the scenery on U.S. Highways 60, 70, and 191. The canyons, valleys, mountains, desert plants, and beautiful trees were almost beyond description. My digital camera got a real workout along the way. We had two favorite areas on the trip. The first was the area around Globe, Arizona, and we decided to make a return trip to that area in April 2005.

Our second favorite area was all of US Highway 191 up to Mule Creek, New Mexico. On that stretch of the highway, drivers are going "down the mountain" and into New Mexico and you really notice differences in terrain and vegetation. We had been to New Mexico and Arizona many times, but had clung to the Interstates on our journeys and had "made better time." We certainly missed a lot of spectacular scenery on those journeys.

When I was about 12 years old, we made a trip to Silver City, New Mexico to visit some of my dad's family. I remember that trip clearly because we spent a week with my dad's Uncle Rex, an old bachelor, who had, along with the rest of his family, made the long migration journey from Comanche County, Texas to New Mexico by horse-drawn wagon when he was a young man. Of course, the main reason I remember Uncle Rex so clearly was that he had spent his whole adult life searching for gold and silver in New Mexico. He told such exciting stories about claims filed and stolen, gunfights, and places where he knew gold was located, and those stories made me want to head out with Uncle Rex and start digging for gold.

We returned to Silver City in May 2004, to search for family, rather than for gold. Our first stop was in Memory Lane Cemetery. I had completed an extensive family search using my computer and knew that Uncle Rex, his brothers, and a few other family members were buried in that cemetery. We easily found all of them and I photographed all of the head stones. Then I discovered that Ben Lilly, an old mountain lion hunter from the area, and Billy the Kid's mother were also buried in that cemetery, and photographed those stones, as well. The trip to Silver City really brought back memories of that first trip to Silver City so many years ago.

Against his better judgement, my husband agreed to drive from Silver City to Interstate 25, using New Mexico Highway 152. That highway is in excellent condition, but is probably the curviest, most challenging road that we have ever taken. The canyons are steep and some of the sides do not have barricades or retainers to prevent cars from going over the edge in the event of a sudden flat tire or a skid. We loved the scenery, which was beyond our expectations, but do not plan to drive on that highway again.