Got our kicks on Route 66 (what's left of it, anyway...)

This morning we cooked Gavin's friends breakfast as a thank you for letting us spend the night, then we headed out of Santa Fe toward Arizona! We drove back down to Albequerque to catch Interstate 40, the interstate which has pretty much replaced Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico. We drove a couple hours to Gallup, at which point we needed a break. I had been curious about some of the "Indian Markets" we had seen advertised. (They are not called the P.C. "Native Americans" here - every sign boasts "Indian" jewelry, "Indian" restaurants, "Indian" gift shops, etc. Gavin wondered if the Indian restaurants would serve curry, but of course they are not referring to that kind of Indian. :) ) After seeing literally a dozen huge billboards for this particular Indian Market, we were quite surprised to see that it was literally the size of a small gas station; quite disproportionate to the amount of advertising. Nonetheless, we bought a Route 66 souvenier coffee mug and a stone vase.

At this point I realized the Route 66 had diverged from Interstate 40, and I decided we should follow it for a bit just for the experience. Route 66 went through downtown Gallup and was lined with a ton of Native American souvenier shops, but after our first stop at the "Indian Market" we decided Native American decor is not really our style, so we didn't stop. At the other end of Gallup we got back on Interstate 40, wanting to make a bit better time than we would have on Route 66.

Downtown Gallup on Route 66.

Our next stop was Petrified Forest National Monument. At the visitor's center off the highway, we picked up a map of the 28 mile scenic drive through the monument, with plenty of scenic stops and viewpoints. First few stops were viewpoints of the Painted Desert - incredibly eroded sandstone mostly in brilliant brick red.

The breathtaking Painted Desert.

Gavin and I at the Painted Desert.

Panorama of the Painted Desert.

Next stops inside the Petrified Forest National Monument we were able to view petroglyphs and the remains of Puerco Pueblo, an ancient village that housed around 1,200 people in the late 13th century. Newspaper Rock had hundreds of petroglyphs that were visible through viewing scopes, but not close enough to photograph.

Petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo.

Our final stop in the Petrified Forest National Monument was the Crystal Forest, full of petrified logs of all sizes for which the monument is named. The petrified logs are 225 million years old! Some looked so much like the original wood I had to touch them to see if they were truly stone, and others were obviously stone in pinks, reds, oranges and clear quartz.

Me among some large petrified logs.

Beautiful crystals of quartz and more in this petrified log.

Petrified trunk of a tree.

More petrified logs.

They're everywhere!

Next, we headed north again to hit up with Interstate 40 again and continue our journey west. We stopped in Flagstaff for dinner at a delicious Latin fusion restaurant called Criollo and finally got to try green chile salsa, an important staple in New Mexican cuisine (carried over into Arizona) - REALLY tasty!

After our dinner, we continued driving to Prescott to spend the night. We stayed at a really cute motel called Motor Lodge and got a bungalow with a little porch out front, a tiny kitchen and a fireplace. Tomorrow we will drive a special back road through a canyon to get to Sedona!

The cute and retro Motor Lodge.

Our cute little bungalow.

 

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Closed for Missile Testing?!

This morning we woke up to pouring rain, which was unfortunate since we had planned outdoor activities for today - namely hiking at White Sands National Monument. We also checked the website for White Sands, and found that it was going to be closed until 10:30am for missile testing. While waiting both for the rain to pass and for the monument to open, we had a traditional unhealthy road tripping breakfast at IHOP.

The government's White Sands Missle Testing site is a part of New Mexico large enough encompass Rhode Island AND Delaware. When they test the latest weapons technology they have to close the White Sands National Monument as well as one of the major highways, as both are adjacent to the testing site. So unfortunately, we didn't get to see the sunrise over the dunes as we had planned, not that we would have been able to see much with all the cloud cover, anyway. :)

After breaktast we went to the gift shop and visitors' center for White Sands, as the monument itself was still closed. We wandered around in the little displays and watched a 20 minute movie about White Sands while we waited. We also wandered around the gift shop and noticed that they sold cheap plastic sleds for sledding on the sand dunes. I couldn't resist buying one, plus a little wax to make it go faster. :)

At 10:45am the rain had all but stopped, and Dune Road, the 16 mile loop drive througn White Sands, was finally open. The first 5 miles of the drive there were a lot of desert plants like Indian grass and yucca crowding each other for space on the small dunes. We stopped at a little boardwalk into the dunes that lots of plaques describing desert flora and fauna, but not much of a view. Continuing in from the 5 mile mark, the plants suddenly disappeared and we were surrounded on all sides by the pure white gypsum dunes.

 

Dune Road.

Me on the boardwalk in the greener part of White Sands. Note my super cool Roswell alien t-shirt... :D

Pure white sand!

At the 8 mile mark at the back of the loop, we got out of the car and intended to hike the Alkali Flat hiking trail, a 4 mile loop through the dunes marked by partially buried posts in the ground. We carried the sled and I kept a lookout for the tallest, steepest dune. :) The storm clouds still surrounded the desert, we wanted to try and get the hike in before it started raining again. About 1/2 mile in I found the perfect dune and sledded down it and convinced skeptical Gavin to do it, too. He wasn't as enthused as I was, and it was a lot of work to hike back up to the top in the loose sand. :) We continued hiking up and down the dunes along the trail (Akali FLATS, it was not...) and then we started to hear thunder when we were one mile into the trail. We decided it would probably be best to quit the hike before getting stuck in the dunes during thunder and lightning, plus we didn't have any water, having not planned ahead for a 4 mile hike in the desert. :) We walked back along the trail, and I sledded down every dune on the way back. :) We got back to the Jeep just as it started to rain again.

Ready to sled!

Gavin on his only sledding run... :)

We next had to decide our route into Arizona - we could either go south through Tuscon and Phoenix, or we could go north and see Santa Fe and take Route 66 (now Interstate 40). We opted to go see Santa Fe and some of Gavin's friends from residency, who he hadn't seen for a few years. We drove about 5 hours north on Interstate 25 to Santa Fe, and spent a tiny bit of time wandering around the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe, which was full of expensive, touristy stores selling (IMHO) tacky Native-American-inspired clothing and clunky jewelry. The city itself was lovely with its abundance of rust colored adobe-style buildings rather than modern-style construction. We had dinner at Gavin's friends' house, high up above Santa Fe with a beautiful view over the city and the surrounding mountains. We spent the evening sharing a few bottles of wine, then crashed at their house into the most comfortable bed of our trip. Tomorrow we will continue our trip into Arizona!

Panorama of White Sands National Monument.

 

 

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Our alien photoshoot. :)

Today we started out by exploring the UFO Capital of America: Roswell, NM. Honestly, there is not much to see there, but we made our own fun. We started out by exploring the International UFO Museum, which unfortunately did not actually exhibit UFOs, but instead wall after wall of newspaper clippings, eyewitness testimonies, a few photos, etc dealing with the Roswell incident and its cover up, as well as testimonies from other alien/UFO experiences. They also had a few displays to take photos with life-size replica aliens, and a gift shop with several cheesy Roswell alien t-shirts. I found the perfect silly alien t-shirt for a souvenier, and it even glows in the dark... :)

At the UFO Museum: The Day the Earth Stood Still display.

After the UFO museum, we wandered down the block to Alien Zone, which in addition to its REALLY cheesy gift shop (where Gavin bought his own perfect silly alien t-shirt) has a dingy room in back where you can take photos with aliens in various scenarios, all mde from stuff the owners probably picked up in a junk yard somewhere. :) We had some fun taking pictures in there...

 

After our ridiculous photo shoot, we had a cheap New Mexican lunch at Martin's Capitol Cafe, then headed out of town to our next destination: Carlsbad Caverns.

We arrived at Carlsbad Caverns in the late afternoon, and the only hike/walk that was available at that time was the Big Room walk, a 1.25 mile walk along a sidewalk 800 feet below the surface through a cave that is 1,800 feet long and 255 feet high and full of beautiful stalactites, stalagmites, "draperies," "popcorn," "lilypads," "soda straws" and more! We were not allowed to touch any of the rocks, but before descending in the elevator there was a stalagmite about 5 inches high that had been brought up from the cave for tourists to touch. When we arrived in the cave, we were surprised to see a snack bar, restroom facilities and a large sidewalk to walk through the cave. Really, does people touching the rocks create more damage than actualy blasting out enough rock to create bathrooms, a snack bar and sidewalks through the stalagmites? And when they were blasting all these lovely formations out, couldn't they have brought a few more samples other than that 5 inch tiny little piece? :)

Carlsbad was lovely and fascinating to see the work of centuries of dripping water. Pictures don't give even a hint of the true scope!

 

The beginning of the Big Room walk with its sidewalk.

 

Popcorn formations.

 

Huge stalactites and stalagmites.

 

Soda sttraw formations on the ceiling.

 

 

Me beside the Crystal Fountain, the cavern's largest active (still growing!) stalagmite.

After Carlsbad Caverns, we got back on the road to our next destination, the White Sands National Monument. It was about a three hour drive, through which we saw three completely different ecosystems! We started out in the scrubby, dry plains, where Gavin stopped the Jeep so we could see our very first live tarantula calmly crossing the road. (Neither of us would leave the car to take a picture of it, but it was REALLY big!) As we headed into the mountains we saw a huge male elk standing in the middle of the road and several females on the side. We stopped well away from it and waited for it to walk away; we didn't want to tick off an animal that big, even from inside our Jeep! Heading deeper into the forest and mountains we saw another deer by the side of the road, and then three small deer jumped right in front of us not a minute later! Good thing we were keeping a look out! Coming out of the mountains we were in pinkish rocks and cliffs with more scrubby vegetation clinging to the sides, and we got to watch a beautiful sunset as we pulled in to Alamogordo for the night. We checked into our next cheap motel, the Satellite Inn, and had dinner at the local Pepper's Grill, the only place in town that stayed open past 8pm! After a long day of sightseeing and driving, even the lumpy pillows and saggy mattress will provide a blissful night's sleep. :)

Elk in the road. It looked much bigger in person...

 

Sunset over Alamogordo. Also looked much better in person. :)

 

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Road Trip!

Though most of our travels take us away from the country and usually the continent, we decided to stay stateside for this vacation and see some of the wonderful, quirky and striking towns and landscapes of the American Southwest We started off the trip with a visit to my brother in Dallas, and had a nice weekend of sporting events; two in a row, which is more sporting events than we have seen in the past six years or so. :) We first went to a "game watch" of my brother's alma matter Iowa State University versus their arch-rival Iowa. This was in Dallas, several hundred miles away from Iowa, but there were still 60 or 70 Iowa State grads of all ages in the bar all dressed in Cyclone colors and cheering at the TVs. Immediately after that, we headed over to the Toyota stadium to watch FC Dallas play Vancouver in a soccer match. It was a good day for my brother's favorite teams, as both of them won!

Everything's bigger in Texas... This was casually sitting in the parking lot of a bar.

Brad and I at the FC Dallas match.

GOOOOOAL! Brad was kind enough to lend me an FC Dallas scarf so I could look like a real fan. :)

The next day Gavin and I hit the open road in our rented Jeep Liberty that definitely shows the marks of previous travelers, including signs of an obvious break in through the driver's side. Despite the rental car associate's suggestion we take a Toyota instead, I insisted on the Jeep, feeling nostalgic for Gavin's old Jeep Wrangler soft top. :)

We headed through what is hopefully both the longest and most boring part of the trip: 8 hours from Dallas to Roswell, NM. The scenery, as it were, was mostly oil rigs, windmills, and cotton fields, with the brief relief of a beautiful sunflower field and the occasional tiny town. We attempted to entertain ourselves by listening to Jack Kerouac read his own novel The Open Road, thinking it appropriate because it describes his own journeys through the Southwest, but we got bored within a couple chapters and went "low brow" and listened to stand up comedy on YouTube instead. :)

We did stop to tresspass on a couple farms and take some pictures. :) I had never seen cotton field before and wanted to touch cotton "alive" and growing on a plant, so we turned off the highway and drove down a muddy dirt road to get a picture in a cotton field with some windmills.

Cotton fields and a wind farm.

Me copping a feel of my first ever cotton plant. :)

Sunflower fields. At twilight the sunflowers are all facing down since there is no sun for them to follow. I bet they look much more perky during full daylight!

 

We arrived in Roswell later in the evening, and checked right in to our hotel rather than go exploring. We did notice some Roswell quirks at some of the fast food restaurants...

 

McDonalds shaped like a UFO in Roswell. :)

 

Aliens are welcome at the Roswell Arby's...

...VERY welcome. :)

Tomorrow we look forward to trying to find and meet some aliens. :D Or at least find matching hokey alien t shirts... :)

 

 

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