Miles hiked 1.5

The cliff dwellings

Sweet Potato and Freefall had arrived the night before late.  We told them we planned to hike out in the morning to see the cliff dwellings and then camp at Jordan hot springs.

When we awoke I started packing up and looked over to see Buttercup hardly getting his gear in order.  He told me he felt sick and given that The Greg in Wild had a been sick and Sweet Potato we decided to spend the day and let everyone get well.

Big John, Sweet Potato, and Shepperd enjoying the sites

We chatted with the guy next to us and he offers us use of his car for the day.  So at 1:30 we crammed 7 hikers into a Subaru Forester and drove up to see the Gila Cliff Dwellings.

The visitor center had some great information about the area, the people and what we were going to see.  We proceeded to the actual cliff dwellings.  They are perched up high 175 in the air above the river.  As we hiked up we could see the dwellings and gather an idea of what ingenuity these people had to build their community high on the cliffs.  We walked up the trail passing other tourists but surprisingly there were few people.  We visited the various caves and structures and we learned that only 20% has been restored so the rest of the structures we saw were original.

We wrapped up the day with a final stop at Doc Campbell’s for some ice cream and Internet and then rolled back to camp.
3 other thru-hikers showed up: “Bambi”, “ABC” and “Wild Feather”.  It was great to meet some fellow hikers and learn who else was behind us.  It’s a busy year on the CDT so we are trying to keep up a good pace and stay ahead of the bubble, however, we are in a good mix of hikers ourselves so we are just rolling with it.

Chef Boy’O Bandit