Yep….green chile-covered steak for dinner, and then 10 hours later, the same thing for breakfast. We will never come to Socorro and not eat here, and if they were to close, we’d have no reason to ever return to Socorro.
While it might be difficult to see exactly what you are looking at, and my photo doesn’t even capture them all, those are pronghorn antelope. We usually see one or two of them next to the road, but never nearly 100! Did you know that the pronghorn is the second fastest animal on earth, just behind the cheetah? Neither did we until we consulted Wikipedia.
We drove through Pie Town as opposed to stopping for pie in Pie Town. This isn’t our first time passing through, as we can’t seem to coordinate our travels with a season or hour that would allow us to eat pie there. We really do want some pie from Pie Town because what else is one supposed to do there? Instead, I present you with snow off Highway 32 south of Quemado, New Mexico. I know, pie would have been better.
What you don’t see in this photo is Caroline having to step over the ring of ice along the shore. Quemado Lake, this time of year, is exceedingly cold, close to freezing as a matter of fact, and maybe part of that has to do with being at nearly 7,000 feet above sea level or about 2,100 meters. The water was so cold that as I played with Caroline and told her to step further out and that I needed to take just one more, she started getting nauseous from the biting cold.
Oh my god, are you kidding? Drats, I just found out that while we are looking at an abandoned log cabin on New Mexico Route 12, a really important football game is on TV. Hah, like we could find that out while out on this road, and since when was any football game important? Is it even football season?
It’s the season to visit a ghost town. This one is known as Mogollon [pronounced: moh-guh-yohn]. Back in 1909, about 2,000 people were living here, and the mining town had five saloons, a bunch of brothels, a couple of restaurants, and two hotels. Today, the population sits at zero. Okay, Australians, this one’s for you: the town was built to support the “Little Fannie” mine, and the town itself is listed as the Fannie Hill Mill and Company Town Historic District with the National Register of Historic Places.
Update: The Purple Onion Cafe and the Mogollon Museum in town are still in business, and there is the four-room Silver Creek Inn, which is housed in the J.P. Holland General Store pictured left. These businesses operate from May through October so make sure before you visit that the places are open.
The town has burned down, been nearly washed away, and by 1930 its population had fallen to just 200 souls. Remnants of its past still exist, but they are fading.
We were the only people in town today, all two of us.
Well, us and these two.
Here we are about five miles east of Glenwood, New Mexico, in Whitewater Canyon at what is known as Catwalk Recreation Area.
Back where we parked the car is the site of an old mill that operated about one hundred years ago. Back then, there was a catwalk built here (though I don’t believe it was this sophisticated) that was essential for silver and gold mining being done in the area.
Originally the water from Whitewater Creek fed into a pipe that drove the mill and a generator at one point to supply electricity to the town of Glenwood.
Some day, Caroline and I will have to make a longer trip out of coming this way to visit Pie Town, return to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, burn our membranes on chiles in Hatch, spend more time at Bosque Del Apache, eat at El Camino in Socorro, hang out in Magdalena, and go for a proper visit of Mogollon for some hiking and maybe check out the old mines if that’s possible.
Too shallow to canoe but not so insignificant that it can’t be appreciated. Whitewater Creek runs for many miles through a canyon that can be hiked, though it is considered a difficult trail.
At times, the canyon is rather narrow and there was a tall wisp of a waterfall we could have visited if we were prepared to get our feet wet and crawl over some large boulders. Maybe next time.
This is the road that will take us back the way we came. Yesterday, we were traveling east on this road, and turned right just behind me. Today, we came from the north after making a nice loop around this small corner of New Mexico. Weekend road trips are seriously worth the effort to peel ourselves out of Phoenix.
