Day 28 - Friday, June 27, 2008

Day 28

Gallup, New Mexico to Grants, New Mexico

We had a rough morning getting started. The little human fell and twisted her ankle while were shopping for a pair of new shoes for her. It took a while to recover from that and get ready to travel again.

Later, the little human feeling better again, we took a drive down Route 66 in Gallup and the archeologist continued her love affair (i.e., obsession!) with photographing old signs. That led us to the El Rancho Hotel and Motel (and restaurant for lunch). El Rancho is an old-time famous place where movie stars of the 40's and 50's used to lounge at. My next trip back, I'm also going to stay there.

Afterwards, we took 602 South to Zuni Peublo. After stopping at the visitor's center (we try to do that in every city we're exploring), we then headed over to the Zuni Museum. After the museum, we looked for the famous (and old) Spanish mission, but we couldn't find it so we just headed out of town.

We took Route 53 West to El Morro, a famous landmark of sandstone cliffs and a reliable water source that has been visited for thousands of years. There are inscriptions from the travelers that have stopped there -- petroglyphs from ancient native people, military notations from Spanish explorers, and then white travelers from the 1880's. It's now protected and preserved, or else I'm sure the carving would continue into the present day with spray paint instead of chisels.

Afterwards we continued on Rt. 53 west to the Ice Caves! This was really interesting to see the lava flow on top the ground and the sink holes and caves where the lava tubes had collapsed. We arrived too late to hike to the volcano top, but we did have time to hike to the ice cave and see and feel the 31 degree temperature there. The whole wierd juxtaposition between the temperatures and the landscape made it all very other worldly. It was one of my favorite stops so far!

At 5:00 PM we crossed the Continental Divide (heading east).

Afterwards, we continued on Rt. 53 West into the El Malpais National Monument. There the little human and the archeologist went exploring, taking a good 3 mile hike into the "bad lands" and seeing more lava landscape and very cool things like Junction Cave and The Double Sink Holes. We were hiking specifically in search of the Bat Cave (its real name!) but couldn't find it and so finally turned back because the sun was setting. The walk was very desolate, but very beautiful, and from the top of the mesa we could see the setting sun reflecting off the sandstone cliffs encircling the valley far away and below us. We also had a gorgeous view of the San Mateo Mountains from the badlands mesa as well.

Around 9:00 PM we pulled into the outskirts of Grants and I got to see the last purples and oranges of a beautiful sunset through the windows of a fast-food restaurant we were eating at. That was something I hadn't expected to live to see!

We passed a lot of seedy-looking motels on Route 66 trying to find a place to stay for the evening. We finally found the newer hotels at the other end of town and settled in at a name brand place that had a pool open 24 hours. The little human loved that and took a late swim until 10:30 when and exhausted archeologist dragged her back to the room so she and her throbbing ribs could collapse, literally bone-tired, after the day's two strenuous hikes.