Dragonfly Trail, Silver City

Today we wanted to hike a trail that was recommended to us by the Forest Service Park Ranger, called the Dragonfly Trail, which is located about 2 miles east of Silver City.  The Ranger said that it was a family friendly, easy hike, that you can see dragonflies in the creek and ponds that are along the way, and there are petroglyphs near the creek.  Initial information said the trail was a little over 2 miles long, but in essence, we hiked over 3.5 miles.

Love the dragonfly insignia

Did not see the marking for the Heritage Site 

Start of the trail - left or right? 

Just follow the dragonfly trail markers

The parking lot was pretty full when we got there, so that was a good sign, that the trail was easy to find. Pretty neat markings to show the trail, donned our hiking gear/hats/walking sticks and water and off we went.  The trail information said to veer to the right when you come to the t on the trail which we did.  Any minute we expected to see a mule deer pick up his head and run away but no such luck.

Had a decision to make about a mile and half in, go right or left, we chose to go left because the trail was dropping down near the creek.  Pretty soon Dave saw a trail poster nailed to a tree,  and he said he thought the ponds were right near there.  We found out after we got back ‘home’ that was where the petroglyphs were located, only we did not see them.  However we did get to see some dragonflies, not a lot due to the dryness and very little water, but we did see them. And - after we got back - found out that the trail was so named because there is a petroglyph of a dragonfly on rock at that area - oh well.  Looked around, saw pretty flowers, then had to make a decision again - do we go back to the intersection and maybe find another way or continuing going to the left, which we ultimately chose.  About 1000 feet beyond we saw the trail clearly marked again and we were continuing on the loop which we had hoped to do.

Pretty tiny little clumps of flowers

The first part of the trail was pretty scenic, up and down, in and out of the scrubland.  But then we dropped down to the creek side and it was apparent that we were near the petroglyphs because there were rock walls lining the creek bed.  Still did not see petroglyphs, but that was okay, we had a lovely 3.5 mile hike instead.  The second half of the hike was flat-land, scruffy, but it looked like a meadow.  Easy to walk, definitely family friendly.

Way in distance is the Chico Mine - largest copper mine in the US

Dragonfly!!

I think we found the dragonfly petroglyph

Ponds full of dragonflies 

A small silver dragonfly

This looked bad - it's really someone's coat

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is clean/laundry, pack up.  Rest.  Then Wednesday morning we leave to head north of Albuquerque to a small town called Rio Rancho. We were going to head due east out of Silver City but the GPS said we needed to head south to Deming before turning east and north - too twisty and narrow road in the Black Range Mountains to take the RV on, so we will follow the GPS.  Added about 100 miles to our trip, but that’s okay.  Will be there to hopefully see some of the National Monuments (Petroglyph NM, Chaco Culture National Historical Site, El Morro NM, Pecos National Historical Park, and Bandelier NM - we were here before but there was a fire and it was closed to us, hopefully this time we can see Bandelier).