Grand Finale

I had planned on getting home on the 20th but since I had passed that deadline the day before I figured I ought to try and get home on the 21st. My plan was to hit Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque and then take the scenic route through southern Colorado on my way to Grand Junction and then home.

The Econo Lodge I stayed in had free breakfast with those yummy make-your-own waffles so I partook of that and then headed out of town. The Petroglyph Monument was easy enough to find and I hit the visitor's center. There I talked to the Ranger and he suggested I take the 1 hour hike north of the visitor's center that would expose me to about 200 glyphs. I bought the guide, some postcards, and some pretty pins and headed out. I read through part of the guide which talked about how we don't really know what the glyphs mean because each of the different pueblo cultures interprets them differently and it sounded like they don't really want to share that with us.

The glyphs themselves are unremarkable except that they are old and etched into this basalt rock. They are dated to the 1300's which was European Renaissance time so I had a hard time getting excited about what looked like finger painting to me. I'm sure that's disrespectful on some level but I thought I would see things that were more elaborate and without any explanation of what they mean the whole thing was sort of lost on me. The coolest thing I learned about was that there were long distance trade routes in the Americas at that time because there were Macaque glyphs and the birds are not native to the area. In fact they have to come from Mexico City about 1500 miles away! Remembering that they didn't have any pack animals and had to carry everything on foot that's pretty amazing. They aren't sure if the trade sort of leap frogged from village to village or if there was a super long trade road that people used to walk. However, if you consider that on the Camino Real, using donkeys and horses, that it would take 6 months to get there from Mexico City then you can understand just how amazing that is. Turns out they were also trading with cultures from the Pacific ocean based on archaeological finds of shells and fish. Pretty cool.



After leaving the monument I headed out for Colorado. For some reason my body had decided that I needed way more rest than I was giving it so I managed to stay awake until I got to Cuba, NM where I stopped for lunch. There is a neat Mexican Restaurant on the north side of town called El Bruno's that served some good food. I had a stuffed sopapilla which I was excited about because I hadn't had a sopapilla in years. The meal was entirely too large for me and I didn't really like the seasoning on the beef but the chilies were quite good and the dessert sopapilla was awesome. Afterwards I took myself a 1 hour siesta nap under the shade of some trees in the parking lot.

After I sort of woke up I drove into Durango and then took the road north through Silverton and onto Ouray. This was one of the best drives of the trip. I love the high mountains with their lush forests, snow, and multitudes of rivers and waterfalls. The cities are mainly old mining towns and the architecture is Victorian. I met a few people just as I was getting out at scenic points. A retired couple had come down from Montana and were staying in Durango and were going to take the railroad the next day. The lady was quite polite and kept saying 'sir' to me which is unusual at least for me. We talked about the other part of the scenic byway that goes through Telluride and they pointed out some Tanager's that were sitting in trees nearby. The husband reminded me of Melanie's dad as he wanted to talk about my digital camera when his wife left. I imagine they are about the same age so it kind of cracked me up. When I was getting ready to leave that same scenic point this guy that had been riding his bicycle up the mountain (!) stopped for a breather. Remember this is Colorado so these are true mountains and he had ridden up to a height of 10,000+ feet. I stopped to talk to him about the ride and he said he likes to ride from Durango to Silverton a couple of times a year and had ridden through a lot of the parks in Southern Utah as well. He also talked about a friend who rides all the way to San Francisco every year which is ~ 1200 miles and goes through some really mountainous terrain. While we were talking the two girls he was with caught up and started cussing him out for lying about how far they were going. They seemed like a pretty fun group and I kind of wanted to meet up with them in Silverton but figured I had probably better get home. I'm going to seriously consider going back later this summer since there were a number of neat mining ruins that I'd like to go out and explore.



By the time I got to Ouray the sun was setting so I didn't stop and drove through to Grand Junction where I passed out for about 2.5 hours in the rest stop and then drove all the way home.

Petroglyph Pics
Colorado Pics

I finally made it back home on June 22nd at 6:15 a.m. after 43 days, 9000 miles and 170 hours of driving. It was an amazing trip to be sure and I'm glad I'll always have this blog to remember it by. I met some fun people and saw many of the wonderous things our country has to offer. This trip made me realize how much there really is to see, even on a local basis, and that you really have to pick and choose carefully where you go because there's just no way to see it all and really take it all in.

So, at the end of something like this you've got to have a best/worst list, right?

Best Drive: Niagara Falls, NY to Hanover, NH
Worst Drive: Rapid City, SD to Chicago, IL

Coolest: Mount Rushmore
Most disappointing: Petroglyphs

Best 'section': Maine/Acadia
Worst 'section': Both times I got sick!

Favorite baseball game: Boston Red Sox vs Milwaukee Brewers (Sox win)
Least favorite: Stars game (because it went on so long...........)

Places to visit again: Chicago, Maine, Southern CO (and family, of course)

Regrets: None :)

White Sand for everyone!

I woke up around 8 and was still tired but knew I needed to get up so I got my butt out of bed and jumped into the pool for a minute then packed and headed out. White Sands National Monument is only a 30 minute drive from Alamogordo and it went by quickly. You pass through Holloman AFB on the way there though there wasn't much you could see from the road.

The visitor's center at White Sands is pretty neat. It was built in the 1930's using adobe and native materials. Inside are a handful of old looking exhibits but they have a neat introductory video. The gift shop had pins and shot glasses so I picked those up and then went outside to the picnic area to drink my red bull and plan the rest of my day. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go north around the white sands area or go south to Las Cruces so I was checking the map and seeing where it was I was going. I tentatively decided on Cruces since Mom/Dad lived there. The road into the monument is paved most of the way and then turns into a sand road. They actually use snow plows to clear the road of any sand that gets blown onto them and I thought that was pretty funny.



The white sand itself comes from gypsum that dissolves in the mountains and flows down to the valley. The valley doesn't drain to the ocean so the water becomes trapped and as it evaporates the gypsum is left out on the dry lake beds and becomes wind-born. It's pretty crazy to see all of this white sand everywhere with occasional flashes of green marking the innovative plants that are able to survive there. My favorite was the cottonwood tree that can get smothered by a dune but keep living as long as some of its leaves are poking out of the sand. In the fall these leaves turn a brilliant red which looked pretty cool in the pictures I saw.

I went on a couple of quick guided hikes and ended up at a nature center deep within the park near the end of the road. Since its so remote the center uses solar panels to power everything inside which I thought was neat. There were some informative kiosks talking about how solar worked and how states like New Mexico could easily meet their power needs with large scale solar projects. Inside the center was this neat old lady that I talked to at length (longer than I wanted) about traveling and the various parks in the U.S. She's been to Alaska several times and was telling me about the inter-coastal ferry that can take you from Seattle to Alaska in 3 or 4 days. That sounded pretty cool because she said you could just take a bike and hop on and off at the various ferry stops and that sometimes a park ranger would come on board to talk about the things you can see. I might look into that later on in the summer if I can get some work done :)



After taking a few more pictures out on the dunes I high-tailed it back for the highway and headed to the White Sands Missile Range (formerly Proving Grounds) where my dad used to work because they have a museum there that I thought might be neat to see. Unfortunately I was late getting there and the museum itself was closed but they had a number of outdoor exhibits showcasing various missiles that the US had developed. It was a little emotional for me as I thought 'hmm, maybe dad was walking on this same road'. I think he also worked on a couple of the missiles that I saw as I have a cup commemorating the launch of one of them. After I left the base I also thought that dad had probably made the drive to Las Cruces from there several times so that was another bonding moment for me :)

I didn't stop in Las Cruces but just kept driving north. By this time it was pretty late so I decided I wasn't going to make Albuquerque and decided to stop in Socorro, which is about 60 miles south, instead. What a great find this was! Socorro was founded in 1598 by the Spanish and was burnt to the ground during the Pueblo Revolt and resettled in the 1800's. The hotel rooms were super cheap (29.99) and they had a pool that was more than 4 feet deep so I had fun playing around in that. After I got done with the pool I decided to head back into town to take some photos of this building I thought looked neat. I never found out what it was but it was right by the railroad tracks so I'm assuming it must have been a ticketing station or something like that.



On the way back I saw a historic sign so I pulled a u-turn and found the Garcia Opera House. I took this little side road out of the parking lot and noticed there was some sort of to-do going on so I stopped to check it out. Turns out the town has a spanish style plaza and in the center of the plaza is a park. They had some festival going on with a live band so I wandered over and sat in the park under these big old trees listening to live music. The band did cover songs in both English and Spanish and there were a lot of people there wandering around and dancing. Towards the back of the park was this big group of really cute single moms playing with their kids. In fact, most of the moms I saw appeared to be single which seemed kind of odd to me. Around 9:20 I figured I should probably find dinner and get to bed so I headed back for the hotel but before I got there I saw a neat church I wanted to take photos of. It's an adobe church in the missionary style but is not original to the founding of the town.



I took a couple of pictures and then went back to the hotel. Right next door was a restaurant that offered a 10% discount to hotel stayers and the clerk at the hotel desk had said they were excellent so I went in to check it out. The decor was pretty old but the fajitas I had were really good. It seemed like everyone in town ate there as I saw a few people from the plaza party come in to get take-out orders. After dinner I just went back to the room and sacked out.

White Sands Pics
Socorro Pics