Truth or Consequences to Silver City

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Woke up to a fabulous breakfast of blue corn and pine nut pancakes, maple syrup, fruit, homemade applesauce, cranberry orange bread and banana bread.  Jim  is a fabulous cook.  Nina showed me all over their house and her collections of things.  She showed me the most beautiful collection of baby Indian moccasins, most were beaded and then started giving us things, a New Mexico rose stone, a doll from Ecuador, napkins and then telling us stories about dumpster diving and all her shopping at flea markets.    She is quite the character.  We laughed and had a great morning.  We headed up to Truth or Consequences.  This town used to be called Hot Springs.   Apparently in the 1950’s there was a radio show called Truth or Consequences, hosted by Ralph Edwards.  He challenged a USA town to rename itself and he would air the show from there, and the rest is history.  We went to Riverbend Motel and Spa and soaked in the natural hot springs next to the Rio Grande River.

  It was a lovely little place, very relaxing and we had the whole place to ourselves.  It used to be a hostel but September 11 changed that and now it is a small hotel with the hot springs.  Originally it was a bait shop and 3 of the tubs are actually old minnow containers, (cleaned out of course).  The temperatures range from 101 to 108 degrees. The young man who owns it took it over from his parents who had purchased it when he was a small boy.  There is an interesting story posted about the history of the place near the minnow tubs.  It would be a nice relaxing place to spend an evening or two.

  We then went to a park and made some lunch and ate at a picnic table.  We ran into this French Canadian couple for the third time in the last few days.  I decided, I should go and talk to them as this was too much of a coincidence.  They were in their 60’s, had 5 children, were from Quebec but traveled the world with the Peace Corps.  They had spent time in Argentina, West Africa, Chile.  He could speak some English, but she spoke French and Spanish.  Oh how I wish I could learn another language!  It was still interesting to talk to them.  Maybe we will see them again in Arizona. 

We then took off across the mountains toward Silver City.  It would have been much quicker to take I-10 but we did not.  Before we got on that road we drove 35 miles out of our way to visit a ghost town, Lake Valley.  Believe it or not, the ghost town was closed for the day!  Now what reasonable person from the PNW would think that a ghost town would be closed on Wednesday.  Now seeing as we had gone all this way out of the way, we walked around a locked fence and ignored the warnings of being closed.  We walked around the ghost town (really not all that interesting – just a few run down buildings from a time when it was a mining town).

  I took a few pictures and as we were leaving a big burly bald guy comes riding up on his golf cart and told us we needed to leave and come back tomorrow.  He let us know we had broken the rules by walking around the fence and kept telling us they were closed.  Jack finally asked him how we would know after driving all this way that they would be closed?  He said we should have checked their website!  Are you kidding, internet access out here?  Soooo, next time you decide to go to a ghost town, be sure and check their website before you leave the big city, or just avoid Lake Valley all together.  Unfriendly folk in the middle of nowhere. 

After leaving the ghost town, we climbed up on the curviest, craziest road I have ever been on. 

One of many 180s

Finally got into Silver City, elevation 6000 and arrived at Jack and Nancy’s beautiful adobe solar home up above the city.  It was a lovely place right near the edge of the National Forest.  Talked with Nancy and he delightful 86 year old mother, Dorothy and then went out to dinner for pizza at one of their friends restaurants.  Jack owns a bike and hiking shop in downtown Silver City and runs a bicycle race each year in April where all the top dogs  of bicycling come to race these crazy highways, including Lance Armstrong.  It was weird that the news about all his teammates admitting to doping came out today while we were here.