City of Silver

Silver City has a great many things about it that I liked. Here, though is what I did not like and let's get it out of the way quickly.

Yes, that is snow. Chorro actually made a point of walking through it. Perhaps it felt familiar to his little feet? Just to give you a frame of reference, here is Chorro last year in February!

It looks beautiful, but it was cold. In fact, Chorro even had to wear a winter coat last year. He looks smaller in this picture because he was up to his knees in snow. (I just love this picture of him!)

Silver City's downtown is one long street of small shops interspersed with old Victorian style buildings.

The main street is actually not Main Street anymore because Main Street was washed away by a flood some years back. Old Main Street is now a deep arroyo that has been turned into a city park.

Would you be surprised to hear that Silver City brought two of my interests together? The Javalina Coffee Shop!

They make a great latte' in an old sixties type coffee house, one where people sit around and chat, read, play scrabble, and in the twenty-first century, work on computers.

The highlight of my Silver City visit was having lunch with a friend from last year's Radiant Ranch in Albuquerque. (If Radiant Ranch piques your curiosity, go to radiantrecovery.com.)

Leaving Silver City, we crossed the Continental Divide on our way down to a phenomenon that called to my old ghost-town-hounding, William-the Bard-loving heart. Nothing less than a ghost town called, "Shakespeare."

This town was a ghost town several times over in its history, and actually had quite a few other names. It finally became Shakespeare for the Shakespeare Silver and Gold Mining Company. In one way, my visit to it was a disappointment. It is privately owned and can only be toured on alternate weekends, for a fee. I snapped a few pictures from the gates.

In another way, it was FAR from a disappointment. Here at Shakespeare I finally met my first live javelina! He was part of a party of three and the other two hustled over the ridge. This gentleman patiently waited while I found my camera and rolled down my window to get the picture I had been longing for since I first learned that wild javelinas still roam the south.

That made my day complete, but there was still one more good performance to be recorded in Willcox, Arizona, where we spent the night.

Tomorrow is a new day.