Sharifa made fresh zuchini bread for breakfast and offered to drive me the two hours to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and to show me some cool hot springs that are off the beaten path. This was very cool as I was going to skip the adventure, as I just didn’t feel like driving that far after driving all day the last two days. I did want to see the dwellings, the wilderness and the hot springs. I gave her gas money and she drove. This relationship was off to a great start. We enjoyed the drive, the cliff dwellings were really interesting and the hike nice. We even saw some pictographs that she had never seen and another set of individual dwellings. We saw four of NM’s state bird the road runner.
In the afternoon, we parked the car up the road from the visitor center planning on hiking into a remote hot springs located on a river. As I was cruising down the path I came upon a big green and black rattlesnake poised and ready to strike right in the middle of the path… the only way to get to the hot springs. Both of us were a little chicken to pass even if we scared him off as the grass was high on either side of the path and we wouldn't know if he was still there, so we turned around and headed back. As we got to the car the sky was threatening to drop some serious rain. On the drive home the lightening and thunder were surrounding us and the rain did come pretty hard. Maybe the snake was doing us a favor!
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