RV Trip: Week 7: Gila Cliff Dwellings, City of Rocks, and Sedona

So this week I fell in love with New Mexico and then I fell in love with Arizona. During this trip, I have also fallen in love with Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. In fact, I haven’t been to a place yet that I haven’t fallen in love with on some level.

Don’t worry though; I still haven’t fallen in love with shower shoes so we will be returning to our home in Indiana at the end of this 22-week trip. When we do, I think I am going to get my bathroom a dozen roses–because I now know that I haven’t been giving it the appreciation it deserves. Perhaps I will also buy it chocolates.

Enough about how I plan to woo my bathroom when I return though, let’s get on to pictures of what we have been up to this week.

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We started off our week in Silver City, NM. Our first full day there we headed up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It took around 2 hours of driving up a winding mountain road to get there.

However, the views were incredible it made getting a little nauseous worth it! And yep, we saw snow. We haven’t seen snow since day one of our trips, and frankly, I wasn’t in a hurry to see it again. It didn’t last long though, and it was such a sunny day that its presence didn’t ruin our day.

The Gila Dwellings were amazing. So much detail for something created with only simple tools. They were also well preserved for their 1300s beginnings.

One of our children has a great love of burgers, and one of their goals for the trip seems to be to check out all the regional burger chains not available in our area.

Lotaburger was on that list. It has the best green chile burger in any burger chain in North America according to National Geographic and a few other magazines, so of course, that is what we ordered. It was so good! WOW, it had some heat!

After lunch at Lotaburger, we spent our second day in the Silver City area in City of Rocks State Park. It costs just $5 for a car load, and it is worth every penny and more.

Our family spent 2 or so hours exploring the rocks.

We also spent quite a bit of time fooling around. We all took turns looking like Hercules lifting rocks or appearing to be squashed by them.

Wednesday we headed out of New Mexico and into Arizona. One thing I noticed right away was that different types of cactus plants that started popping up. First these short round ones and then the next day fields full of the kind you see in classic dessert scenes in movies.

Early Wednesday afternoon we pulled into Kartchner State Park. After relaxing for an hour, we took off for a brief visit of Tombstone.

On the way back to the RV we stopped in nearby Benson for groceries. We are discovering that shopping for groceries every three days is just about right for our amount of fridge, freezer and cupboard space in our RV. If we buy any more than that we end up playing the “if we move this and then that we should be able to fit the jam in the fridge” game.

That evening Kartchner State Park was used by God to give us several gifts. First, my husband started a conversation with our neighbors only to discover the husband was a mechanic and he was more than willing to help us with the few electrical issues we have had in our RV since we started the trip.

Second, we were treated to the best view of the stars yet this trip as we sat around the campfire in the evening. I tried several times to snap a picture of the beautiful evening sky full of brilliant stars, but sadly all I was able to capture was darkness. So you are just going to have to imagine it.

Oh, and in case you think that we huddle around a campfire every night you should know this was our second campfire of our entire trip and we are seven weeks in.

After a morning run on a trail around the campground the next day, I helped the family pack up and start our journey to Sedona.

On the way, I asked my husband “what is there to see in Sedona?” I had no idea what Sedona looked like. As we turned the first corner in the area, huge red rock hills suddenly appeared. At that moment my heart was in love with Sedona.

There were dozens of AMAZING hiking trails to choose from. To decide what we wanted to hike during our one full day in the Sedona area we headed to Google and did an image search. In the end, we chose to hike Airport loop, take a drive around The Chapel of the Holy Cross, hike to Devil’s Bridge and hike the Fay Canyon trail.

By the end of the day, we had spent more than 5 hours hiking! A favorite by far was Devil’s Bridge (seen in the picture above). I even went out on it too (see this picture on Facebook for proof).

However, 5 hours of hiking in one day wasn’t enough of those beautiful red rocks for me, so I got my husband up early the next day to join me on one more hike. You can see pictures of that one on Instagram, make sure to try out the new sliding feature, I am in LOVE with it, now I can share ten pictures with my viewers in one go!

We ended our week with a day trip to the Petrified Forest & Painted Desert. It was a cold day, so we didn’t get on as many trails as we have in other parks. Thankfully a lot of the great sites could be seen from the road. You can check out more pictures of our time in the Petrified Forest & Painted Desert on Instagram (I told you I love that new slide feature)