25.) Rudderless Daze....Back Roads......Kidnappings....

      Highway 35 leads me through wide open ranch land broken only by red rock boulders.  Massive, rounded things protruding form the the ground like a zit ready to pop.  I imagine a peaceful life here with long slow days of moving cattle, mending fences, or just surveying the land. It seems nice.  Then almost immediately a wall of pine trees. Standing straight and tall like soldiers on guard. The road cuts deep into the forest; a roofless green corridor without visible end.   

     Eventually I come out of the woods high above Bear Canyon Lake.  Longer than it is wide and surrounded by steep grassy hills.  The trees sparse but constant. It’s a post card image. Memories of past family vacations when life was simpler and nothing could possibly better than a day at or on the lake.

I stop in the town of Gila today to pick up some boxes from my Mom.  Dried food stuffs, snacks, even some candy.  I lucked out pretty hard on the whole Parents front.  Also in the box was my renewed driver license. The old one was set to expire on my birthday. So now I’m good till 2020.

     So far the best choice I've made is not using my GPS to get from one place to the next.  I’m enjoying immensely, the meanderings in between. These back roads are magical.  They differ in only style and scope of magnificence. Rolling hills as far as the eye can see set on a backdrop of forest laden mountain sides. It’d be tough to be in a bad mood if you can just go out side and look at all this.  Highway 180.

I consult my map to find my next destination and stumble upon the Baldera Volcano and Ice Cave. Fire and ice. Two extremes, sounds cool. Plus I’ve never seen a volcano or and ice cave, let’s do this. I hike a mile or so up the trail that winds around the outside to the volcano. Active 10,000 years ago, now the whole area is covered with porous lava rock called cinders.  I get to the top  and look down into the crater.  1400 feet wide and 800 feet deep it’s humbling.  I shake my head in awe. Imagine the power, enough to blow off the top of an entire mountain! Incredible. The ice cave is a little bit of a let down, probably because I was spoiled by the Carlsbad Caverns.  You can’t venture into the cave itself, it’s inaccessible. A wooden staircase leads to a viewing platform above the mouth of the cave.  It’s shaped sort of like an amphitheater so I can see all the way to the back of it from here.  What makes it interesting is the cave floor.  Its made entirely of ice and covered in algae.  The way the sunlight refracts through the ice gives the cave floor a neon green hue. I’ve never seen anything like it.    
 
     In the little visitors center where I pay my small fee. Janice and her husband tell me they own the surrounding 4000 acres. 15 volcanos on their property, 29 total in the area.  A slender but hardened women, in her 60’s I’m guessing.  She tells me that her great grandpa built the first school here in town. He bought the land and it was eventually inherited by her grandmother.  Grandma’s husband tried to sell some of the land by forging her signature.  When she got word of this she sweet talked a neighbor for a ride to her lawyer.  He tells her that what her husband is trying to do is illegal so she swiftly returned home and kick the man out. 
Another story follows about a distant cousin.  As a young boy her cousin was kidnapped by the Navajo Indians and later traded to the Apache. He lived with them for years, grew up within their tribe. They accepted him as their own, he even had an Apache foster mother.  One night the Apache kidnapped a young girl and brought her to the tribe.  Janice’s cousin snuck out with a horse and returned the girl to her parents.  He stayed in town too but would always venture back to the tribe to visit his Apache mother.

When her grandma died Janice’s parents inherited the land.  They were attending Arizona University at the time and low on funds for tuition.  They decided to move up here to the volcano and open it up to tourists.  They started with a saloon and dance hall.  Then they built a few cabins for the overindulgent to sleep it off or families to spend the weekend.  Eventually the saloon was turned into a house, additions were added and now Janice and her husband run it as a visitors center and curio shop.  What a family!