Across The USA by Dodge
Chapter 26
After Santa Fe I drove to Albuquerque which is a nice city. Although there are around three-quarters of a million people the pace of life is relaxed and it's just like a big country town.
Some of the things I saw there were the Sandia Peak Tramway (another word for cable car) which was spectacular; the Coronado State Monument -- in the cave at the start of "Indiana Jones And the Last Crusade" they find Coronado's crucifix -- at nearby Bernalillo and the Kirtland Air Force Base which houses the National Atomic Museum. That was incredible with replicas of Little Boy And Fat Man (used at Hiroshima) and every other nuclear device since then, disarmed of course, and a stack of planes and rocket launchers etc.
I also went to the Museum of Natural History (which is where that photographer I mentioned earlier ignored the signs and paid the penalty) which had two great exhibits at the time, one on the conquistadors and another on wolves; and saw "Unforgiven" on opening night.
After Albuquerque I drove across to Arizona where I saw Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation; then the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks; Hubbell Trading Post and Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d'shay).
Driving down the highway is pretty amazing in itself in that you pass through town after town that you've either seen in a movie or has been mentioned in a song such as Gallup, New Mexico from "Route 66" or Winslow, Arizona in that Eagles song.
The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest are really the same thing and stretch from I-40 from Gallup through to Highway 180 headed to Holbrook.
The Painted Desert section lies north of the Interstate and passes through such places as Tiponi Point, Kachina Point, Chinde Point and Nizhoni Point. What you can see from the road is amazing -- the badlands are multi-coloured and incredible.
The road heads south and passes Puerco Indian Ruin and Newspaper Rock which is covered in Anasazi petroglyphs. [As any "X-Files" fan knows, the Anasazi or ancient ones were featured in the series 2/3 trilogy.]
From there, features include The Tepees, Blue Mesa, Agate Bridge, Jasper Forest, Crystal Forest and Long Logs.
After spending the night in Holbrook, I headed north again along xxxx back into Navajo land. The Hubbell Trading Post was established in 1878 and I doubt there's been any maintenance to the building since then! It really does feel like you're back in the wild wild west. You hear the floorboards creak and you expect Clint Eastwood to poke his head round the corner any second.
The Canyon de Chelly is, compared to the Grand Canyon, largely ignored by tourists but is an incredible place.
I went for a hike here which was hard work for someone not in peak physical condition! You descend a zig-zagging path down a rocky wall to a creek and follow it to a place called the White House Ruins which is where the indians lived until around 1400.
I bought some nice looking turquoise jewellery from some indians who traded near the old ruins and was going to give it to my sister Dianne for her birthday when I got back home but unfortunately I either lost it or more likely it was stolen from my luggage on the way back to Australia. I stupidly left it in a pocket of my backpack as far as I remembered but when I got it back it was empty.
Chapter 27
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