The end of the road (outbound)

jdewyze

Day 7: Chinle to Chaco Canyon to Gallup. 265 miles; 8.5 hours.

The Navajo Nation can be wintry in early April. We worried that more rain Monday morning might close the roads to Chaco Canyon, which we really wanted to visit.
Although it was almost 12:30 by the time we reached the 20-mile dirt track leading in to the park, we decided to chance it, and reached the visitor center a little after 1.
I couldn’t resist visiting “our” campsite — where we would have slept Monday night were it not for the frigid forecast.
Visitors access most of the park’s trails and major sites by driving on a paved loop road. Then you park and walk to sites like Pueblo Bonito, the largest building site in the broad shallow canyon.
People started living here and building complex free-standing brick structures almost 1200 years ago.
The Pueblo Bonito complex covered three acres and contained around 600 rooms four stories tall.
Archaeologists think much of this site was ceremonial. The Chaco residents also built an impressive network of wide roads, and people trekked here from afar to trade all manner of goods.
We saw enough to get a sense of what’s here, then made it out over the dirt road to head for the section of the old Route 66 that passes through Gallup.

Day 8: Gallup to Zuni Pueblo to Albuquerque. 199 miles, 7 hours, 10 minutes.

We were sad to miss the Hopi Pueblo in Arizona, but decided we could pop into the ancestral lands of another tribe: the Zuni, whose primary village is just 45 minutes south of Gallup. We visited a private museum, a trading post, and the visitor center there but were not supposed to take any photos. All very interesting, but with nothing to share in the way of images.

The other highlight of our day was an afternoon stop at the Albuquerque home of the couple who are raising one of Trent’s litter mates, Tex. They have a huge, fenced pasture behind their home, where the brothers romped ecstatically.

Equally thrilling to Trent was his discovery of the muddy drainage ditch coming off the irrigation channel at the back of the property. In it, he transformed himself from a lab/golden mix into something more closely resembling a chocolate lab. (Or a pig?)

We hosed some of the mud off but still needed to take him to a nearby doggy self-wash facility to make him presentable again.

Day 9: Albuquerque to Roswell to Lamesa, Texas. 170 miles, 8 hours, 45 minutes, including stops.

Roswell, New Mexico is the town that many people believe was the site of an alien spaceship crash in 1947. The incident and subsequent theories about the US government’s attempts to cover it up have created a substantial tourist industry in Roswell, a town that otherwise wouldn’t get a lot of attention.

We had expected the UFO Museum to be cheesy, but it surprised us by how large and complex it was.
Trent seems to be sneering — but is it because of the alien presence… or the hype

To break up the journey, we spent the night in the small but friendly town of Lamesa, Texas.

Day 10: Lamesa to Austin. 348.8 miles, 6 hours 10 minutes.

Almost immediately after crossing into Texas, the landscape changed. I’d never seen that combination or enormous fields, dotted with oil wells.
Even more impressive was the bloom of bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush and other wildflowers once we hit the hill country west of Austin.
The bluebonnet is the official state flower of Texas.

We arrived at our home-exchange base in Austin a little after 2, having covered 2,034 since leaving our garage. Our son and his family from Reno landed at the airport a few hours later. Now the next phase of this adventure has begun.

Lots of eating,
A bit of sightseeing.
Mounting anxiety over the question hovering over Monday’s big event: will the building clouds obscure it?

2 thoughts on “The end of the road (outbound)”

  1. John Malugen's avatar John Malugen April 8, 2024 / 3:37 am

    Thanks, Jeannette, for bringing back a special time for me. I still remember the trip to Chaco Canyon and the dirt road. There was something eerie about it. The desolation and the past civilization.

    Beautiful pictures of the rest of the route, too.

    John

    Reply

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