Silver City

Gail just pulled into Silver City after doing an extra four miles north, taking pictures and high fiving the trail signs, before she pulled out the GPS and realized she'd missed the turnoff to Silver City. Then she went back four miles and then down to Silver City. She's in pretty good spirits, although she hasn't decided what to do about the fires yet. A few other hikers had gone through the fire via Gila River. They said it was one of the scariest things they'd ever done. They made it to their next town and then got an escort by police back to Silver City. Gail really has no choices to get around the Gila Forest, which has been mostly evacuated and might not be opened up until August.

South of Silver City is the Tyrone open pit copper mine. She walked around it to the east side. She could see one lonely bulldozer re-contouring a section of the mine to start bringing it back to natural. There was an educational display by the trail that described how the land is contoured and then cattle are allowed to wander onto the land because they poop and then grass can grow on the poop, and so on. This was a bitter pill for Gail who as mentioned below hates cattle grazing.

Speaking of cattle, Gail told me that when she takes water from the cattle watering tanks, which is her only source of water besides caches left by nice people who like hikers, the cattle get pretty distressed. She says that the calves "bawl" and feel forced to actually get up and walk away from strange humans. But, Gail used to sing cowboy lullabies to my brother and me when we were kids, so she knew what to do. She sang the lullabies and the cows simmered right down.

Gail is headed out for Mexican and margaritas, her favorite. She'll start researching tomorrow what she will do about the fires.