Day 8 2001.12.03

I reluctantly bid goodbye to the luxurious web-authoring space we got for the night in Tucumcari, NM. (Sleep? What's sleep?)

Soon we're on the road and barreling past distinctively New Mexican horizons.

The landscape is definitely foreign here. We come upon a forest... well, a "forest".
The trees are no higher than 10 feet and look like green meatballs.

And as we come over a small rise we see some Purple Mountains' Majesty

An interesting sign, philosopically:


As we are stuck in a traffic jam in Albuquerque, a vision comes to me; I will not succumb to road rage.
 

After we clear Albuquerque, we see signs for Indian Petroglyph National Monument and decide we deserve a break. Going in we see that rattlesnakes may exist.
Also ferrets with lollipops.

Native Americans came to this hill, Boca Negra, to tap sacred pictures into the rocks. The rocks have a unique chemical composition thanks to their volcanic origin. The outside oxidized very quickly giving them a dark patina. However, it is very thin and fairly easily broken through. The rock beneath is light and stays that way when weathered, so the drawings last for centuries.
There are many pictures all over the hill, even some from later conquistadors. (Mostly crosses and scribbles over the more "ungodly" glyphs.) Amazingly, there is remarkably little modern graffitti.

Pteranodons may exist!!

Zipping down I-40 later, we come to the hind-end of nowhere.

On exit 47, Continental Divide, NM we find ... well, you can probably guess.

Somewhere near the border of Arizona there appears a big hole. It's an old native american location turned into a "glitzy" casino. Unfortunately, the camera takes too long to boot up and...
Oh well, we can always get a photo on the way back.

Then we go on to Flagstaff & decide we're too bushed to drive the last 2 hours, so we stop in a motel and zzzzz......

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