Last Travel Day For a While

Well this is the last travel day for a week. Today's challenge seems rather uncomplicated. What time is it really? When I arrive in Gallup, the alarm clock in the room is one hour ahead of what I thought the time should be. But how could the time have changed? So I assumed that the hotel clock was right and set the alarm for 6. So up I hop, flip on the TV and discover that the local coverage is not yet on. Oh well, shower, shave and oh never mind. Finally, the local newscast comes on and I see that the room clock is wrong. Now I am up and ready to go much earlier than necessary. So I might as well get on the road.

Rather than going straight to Santa Fe as I had planned I figured I could hit a couple more National Monuments that I figured I would miss. So off I head to my first stop El Morro National Monument. Not knowing what to expect I was surprised by this stop. I am fascinated by this kind of stuff. As a result, I used up any extra time earned from the alarm clock. Now you all have to put up with my silliness since I am sure I put up too many pictures. But tough!

It basically is a big wall of graffiti. This place had a water hole that attracted early Native Americans, Spanish Conquistadors, Camel caravans, California bound folks, and railroad planners. Each group marked their name and arrival time in the sandstone wall. So petroglyphs of unknown origin, Spanish soldiers conquering the land for Spain, experimental use of camels for transport, emigrant trail users, and Union Pacific Railroad planners. Some of these early grafitti artists were pretty impressive.

I gave my blog address to the Ranger at El Morro. I hope she will correct any of my memory errors.

After finishing the walk at El Morro I headed to my next stop, El Malpais National Monument. Being from volcano country, another monument with cinder cones, lava flows and lava tubes doesn't take a lot of time to explore. The Ranger however gave me a great idea for a later stop; the Acoma Pueblo. I will try to catch it some time in the trip.

Finally, I headed to my perch in Santa Fe. One place for seven days, I won't know what to do.