Mesas, Deserts, Trees, Rocks ,Stars, and Craters

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Our first stop today was at Acoma, the oldest continually occupied community in North America. It is the home of a clan of Pueblo Indians that have lived her since around 1100AD. It is a fascinating place. Our guide told us how the Spanish came here, followed by the Franciscans who tried to force the native americans to give up their beliefs in favor of the "one true" Catholic religion. The blending of the two was really interesting and evident in the church and village. The guide was very secretive about the clan's traditional religious beliefs, practices, and rituals, and our attempts to lure more details out of him were mostly unsuccessful. The community is on top of a beautiful mesa on the reservation and can only be visited with a guide. Do it, though, if you are ever in the Albuquerque area.

The next stop was the El Rancho Motel on Historic Route 66 in Gallup, NM. This historic site was the base for dozens of Hollywood stars of western movies filmed near here. The lobby is filled with classic photos and each room bears a plaque of a star that stayed there. The motel is still in use but many of the unoccupied rooms had their doors left open so snoops (I mean tourists) like us could wander by and take photos.

Stop 3 was the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. Re the Painted Desert, we were under heavy cloud cover when we passed through so we didn't get the full benefit of sunshine and shadows on the varied color formations but it was impressive nonetheless. Given the scenery we had already been through, the bar is set very high for oohs and ahhs. We got them, though, when we finally saw, from one of the viewpoints, the sea of petrified logs spread across the valley floor. There were places you could get up close and personal with the petrified wood and examine the intricate colors and patterns of the crystalline structure inside the best specimens. Some of John's finest photos were taken here and I look forward to posting several shortly. We were instructed not to take any petrified wood from the park and there were signs to that effect everywhere. When we left the park, we saw so many shops and businesses selling petrified wood, parking lots full of it, that we wondered where it all came from. Hmm.

After a brief photo op in Holbrook at the WigWam Motel, where all the rooms are in fact wigwams, we headed straight to Meteor Crater with a low probability of getting there before they closed at 5:00. Traveling at let's just say well above the speed limit for about an hour, we got to the exit at 4:55 and were still 6 miles away from the crater itself. We pressed on anyway. Luckily, we saw a sign a couple miles in that said they were open until 7:00PM tonight. Then, while waiting in the ticket line, we saw the clock said 4:15PM vs. our watches at 5:15PM. The time zone thing got us again! Apparently the Navajo reservation abides by federal daylight savings time but the rest of Arizona does not, I haven't cracked this time zone thing yet. We went from not being able to make it at all and almost skipping it to being there with almost 3 hours to spare! It was great to see the crater and stand on its rim after seeing pictures of it for decades. It is almost 3 miles in circumference and about 550 feet deep. The sun was out and the sky clear, making for great views and pictures.

Finally, onto Flagstaff with a goal to find a motel near the Toyota dealership where I have an appointment at 7:30AM tomorrow for my SECOND 5,000 MILE OIL CHANGE and TIRE ROTATION of this trip. We had one of the best dinners of the trip at a brewpub near the university to close the day.

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