Images of Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument – Southwestern New Mexico, taken in October 2017.

Deep in the Gila National Forest, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument is not an easy park to get to. From Silver City it’s almost two hours of mountainous hairpin turns and switchbacks on New Mexico Highway 15 which at its harshest even becomes a center-lineless one-and-a-half lane road. This is Hawai’i’s Road to Hana without the ocean views and tropical plants! Not since I drove that road have I been worn out by a stretch of highway. And like the road to Hana, luckily there was an alternate route that I could use to get back to my starting point without having to drive it again…once was enough.

The park itself is a wonderful place with a nice one-mile hike that culminates with a stroll through some well preserved and interesting cliff dwellings that date as far back as the year 550. Along the way I was surprised by a Blue Heron and had a lady call my attention to a caterpillar that had settled on the hood of my 16-35 mm lens. How it got there I have no idea but I was glad it was just a caterpillar because in the wild there are other possibilities that would not be as pleasant to deal with! As it was, I coaxed the fury little creature onto a stick and then settled it on a nearby branch before snapping a picture. Although it’s a stretch I consider this sort of encounter a run-in with wildlife; sure it’s not equivalent to my stumbling upon a bear and her cubs in the wilderness above the Arctic Circle in Alaska but that was one menacing looking caterpillar and it got way closer than that bear so…wildlife!