Day: June 30, 2021

We left Los Alamos this morning heading for Puya Cliffs Monument to the East of us, only to arrive to a big visitor center that said “WE ARE OPEN” (and the website said they were open) only to find out the gift shop was open but the actual cliffs and tours have been closed for over a year from COVID. So…while I understand… that felt a little crappy because we drove a bit to go there and they could have been a little more forthcoming.

We turned around and headed in the opposite direction to Bandelier National Monument, a part of the Pajarito Plateau that was the ancestral site of Puebloan Indians. It was our first chance to use our National Parks Annual Pass!

There is evidence of human activity in the area from 11,000 years ago, but these preserved petroglyphs and cave dwellings date from around 1150 to 1600. We started out at the Frijoles Canyon overlook and you could really feel how vast the canyon was.

We stopped at the visitor center which had some really good models of the area in its prime.

We did the Main Loop Trail which is where the majority of the sites were marked.

This rock with all of the porous looking holes is actually called Tuff. It’s a thick layer of compressed volcanic ash from an ancient volcano. This soft rock made it easier to carve out dwellings and cave houses. Although I’m sure it was still a crazy undertaking with just the tools they had available.

The model of the structure above as it would have looked when the area was occupied.

We were able to climb up the rock and climb ladders into the little cave dwellings to explore.

After exploring Bandelier for a while and walking the Nature Trail back to the visitor center, it was time to head over the mountain pass to go to the west side of New Mexico into Navajo land.

At one point the road said “unmaintained mountain road ahead, no semis or large trucks” and we were nervous. ha Turns out it was fine! It was dirt…but wide and fairly smooth. It honestly looked exactly like rural Norway when we were driving from Sweden out towards waterfalls. I expected to see Moose but all I got were deer.

The other side of the mountain looked much more “new mexico” with the striated rock beds and flat mesas.

Those mesas and plateaus gave way to flat plains for quite a way.

We drove another 1.5 hours through navajo nation off-reservation trust land on a terrible TERRIBLE dirt washed out road for about 15 miles to reach Chaco Culture Center, Another ancestral Native American site of ruins. We have a hilarious video of us bouncing all over the car capturing the craziness of the drive, but I cant upload it here. ha

This area, from around 950 to 1100, was a very advanced and huge community of Puebloan Indians. No other structures this large would be built anywhere in North America until the 1800s. They have found cocoa bean residue in pots indicating vast trade routes and networks as cacao beans cant grow in this area of New Mexico. They also found macaw and parrot skulls which would have only come from South America.

They found over 50,000 pieces of turquoise in just that one lit up square room!

This culture was very tied to astronomy and the moon. They had spirals carved into rocks that hit exactly on the minimum and maximum of the suns trajectory over a 9 year cycle. They set up their long walls of the buildings exactly along moon track lines across the sky. Crazy the amount of knowledge acquired over time that would have been needed to lay this sort of thing out. It would have taken at least 18.5 years alone just to witness and document one full minimum and maximum of the moon cycle.. so obviously multiples of those were witnessed over generations to know that they repeated!

The ruins are in a 9 mile loop that you can drive and park nearer the sites. We walked between 2 of the biggest ruins along what is called the Petroglyph trail.

We had a nice time out walking in the sun and some warmth for the first time in 3 days. It has been so rainy and gloomy almost everywhere until we hit the west side of the mountain. I very much enjoyed it.

We were saved by the trusty Honda Pilot and her built-in 2014 GPS system as none of us had signal and our phones wouldn’t tell us which road to take towards Arizona!

I had planned to visit Window Rock, the capital of Navajo Nation, eat at a Navajo Diné restaurant and see the navajo museum, but unfortunately everything on Navajo land is still closed to non-residents. They have been going back and forth for a couple weeks here…so I still had hopes we could visit… but it looks like we are missing the opening by a couple weeks. So, on to Gallup, New Mexico for the night. We were arriving around 8:30pm and a lot of places close then, so we ended up with Mediterranean food again at a place called Oasis Restaurant. Lamb kabob and a combo plate.

Tomorrow we will cross into Arizona and end our night at the Grand Canyon. Let’s see what we can find open 🙂

We started out fairly early for us. I think we were on the road by 7:30am. We knew we had a lot of ground to cover today!

Our first planned stop was Cadillac Ranch on I-40 just past Amarillo, Texas. At the exit is the “2nd Amendment Cowboy”. He’s an old muffler man purchased at an auction in 2014 by this RV Park right by Cadillac Ranch.

I was honestly super surprised at the number of people already out at Cadillac Ranch before 9am. The guy who runs the show out here selling merch, spraypaint and food wasn’t even set up yet. We beat him here! ha

We came prepared with out own spray paint because I figured it would cost $20 a can there. Actually, it was quite reasonable at $6/can… (pending you don’t beat the vendor to their own site)

Norah had been excited about this since before the trip. So she spray painted everything.

Her name.

A tire.

The dirt. haha

Overall, she really enjoyed herself. On our way back, we saw a couple headed out with no spray paint, so we offered them our cans that still had plenty of paint in them and off on our merry way we went. 🙂

Right at the New Mexico line is an exit for Glenrio. Not much left at Glenrio, but I wanted to stop because its such a great (terrible) example of what happened to some of these towns when the interstate highway system was put in.

Every building down through here was just sitting derelict- a casualty of Route 66’s fading of importance. At one time, this place was quite interesting. Sitting right on the border of New Mexico and Texas, the town got creative. Gas tax was cheaper in Texas, so all of the fuel was sold on the Texas side. But Texas was a dry county there, so all the bar and liquor items were sold on the New Mexico side.

We drove through Tucumcari, New Mexico next. Such a neatly preserved Route 66 gem. So many mid century hotel signs. This town actually didn’t feel like it died 40 years ago… it was alive and well. I really loved its character. We planned to go to the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum here, but they were closed on Mondays. Go figure. The Route 66 museums we passed in Oklahoma were closed on Sundays. We should have left 1 day later, I guess!

We did lunch at Blake’s Lotaburger- a New Mexico chain that started after WWII in Albuquerque. They are famous for their chopped hatch green chilis you can add to your burger or your breakfast burrito.

We loved their fries- very crispy and good. Their chicken sandwich that Norah ordered was good… but their burger was just…ok. The hatch chilis on it though were good. I also wanted to sample the breakfast burritos they have…and it was only 10:15am, so I added a carne adovada to our order. and THAT is where the prize is- their breakfast burritos. ha So we’ll have to pick up one of those one morning here before we leave New Mexico.

After leaving Tucumcari, we headed north toward the town of Taos to see the Taos Pueblo.

Finally after winding up through the roads for a couple hours, we arrived in Taos. I knew that we couldn’t enter the pueblo because of COVID restrictions still in place on Indian land… but I figured we could at least look at the outside. Nope. Big blockade keeping anyone that is not a resident out. So that was a big disappointment and 3 hours of driving for nothing. Well, not nothing… I felt like I would really like Taos… so I wanted to explore it. We have entertained a rental house out west- Vegas, Phoenix, New Mexico.. Taos’ hat had been in the ring. It’s no longer. It’s out. ha

Apparently it snows a lot there in the winter and its a ski destination because the elevation is so high (which made me feel better when Kegan told me I WAS out of shape…but I wasn’t just huffing and puffing walking through town because of that. ha I hadn’t even considered the elevation!)

The whole town was under construction that had standstill traffic up and down the streets. We stopped to go to the Kit Carson home and museum- guy standing out front that works there tells us it’s closed for the day. When everything and the signs all said it was open. He told us to come back at 11am the next day (it was like 3pm at the time ha)

We went to get a bite of food and beer at the Taos Mesa Brewery that had “crowlers” to go- basically giant “growler” cans. So Kegan got one. We tried to get a table, but the person working told us it was a 30-45 minute wait but we could order takeout and it would be done super fast. Ok, so we ordered Norah a small pizza- which did look great, by the way… but it took 35 minutes for it to come out. and Everyone around us got seating in less than 15. We bet on the wrong horse. Per usual.

So, with Taos being a bust all around.. we headed back down towards Santa Fe. I had skipped Sante Fe this trip because as I was researching I found tons of stuff I wanted to do and we could see it all on a quick pass through- so we decided to skip it entirely and make a long weekend trip to Sante Fe sometime in the future. Well, now we had 4 hours of evening I didnt plan for… so we headed down the 2 hours towards the city.

We saw Camel Rock along the way. It wasnt very “camel-y” more like Turtle Rock.

We arrived at Meow Wolf Sante Fe, a giant art installation of over 70 rooms with blacklight psychedelic experiences that was actually commissioned by George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame. He actually lives in Sante Fe. When asked WHY SANTE FE?? he said:

“It’s one of the oldest cities in the U.S. Older than anything even on the East Coast. Because it’s a state capital, it has many amenities that you associate with a larger city—great museums and wonderful restaurants. “At the same time, I like the small town thing. You can get in the car and get anywhere in 10 minutes. Of my 10 years in L.A., two of them were on the freeways…” Then there’s the question of addiction. When I got to Santa Fe, I became addicted to green chile. You can’t get it anywhere else. I can’t imagine life anywhere else.”

So, of course- I REALLY wanted to go to this- so I picked this one thing to go do in Sante Fe for the night. Sold out for the evening. Even though they themselves on the Google Reviews said you didn’t need advance tickets for weekdays. (I did try to book online but it only allowed you to book two days in advance) *sigh* another item for the day, closed. So basically we did 6 hours of driving for no reason today except to see the scenery.

At this point, we were defeated for the day- time to pack it in and try again tomorrow, so we headed for Los Alamos. We climbed back up some elevation from Santa Fe and had some great features and views outside.

When we arrived, I was shocked to find that it was a cute vibrant nice town! Its home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory which was the site of the atomic bomb testing or the Manhattan Project in WWII. They have repurposed the old project gate into restroom facilities at the town park.

This hotel ended up being the nicest one we have had yet- it was brand new and its the first one with the pool or fitness center open AND they had a hot breakfast instead of just grab and go. I am SHOCKED at how closed down these hotels are. I personally think it has nothing to do with COVID and everything to do with needed fewer people and costing less money. But maybe I’m just a grumpy Karen. Anyway- this hotel was fantastic and the pool was available “by reservation” so Norah got to block an entire hour for herself to float around. We also found a fantastic Mediterranean restaurant for carryout and I was in low carb heaven (I’ve been really trying to stick to a keto diet this trip… we’ll see how I do.)

They had a shrimp/butter/ white wine appetizer.

Lamb shank that was amazing… I could eat this every day.

Kegan has kebab skewers with gyro meat… and Norah basically ate pita bread because she had the pizza earlier.

So, overall, the hotel and the food ended the day on a high note and made up for some travel bad luck and closures earlier. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.