May 13, 2016 Gallup, New Mexico

My camera has been taking photos in bright light way to washed out so I tried the Snow/beach setting and it kind of make every thing too yellow and just as washed out. Oh well.

We left from Gallup- Most patriotic small town in america and went to El Morro and then the Zuni pueblo. Here is El Morro’s Inscription rock. El Morro means headlands-so this is the headlands.

People have been stopping at this site for hundreds of years because it has a year round watering hole. It is not a spring, but trapped rainwater. The native americans inscribed in the rocks first. Later spanish explorers, missionaries and wagon train inhabitants also signed their names, some over the Indian petroglyphs.  For some reason I though this rock was mostly petroglyphs, but it is mostly signatures.

Part of the rock face. Here are some of the signatures. The graffiti ended up being a historical record.

The WPA (concurrent with the CCC) built a trail up and over the headland. This is scenes from hiking up the west side.

The Alligator juniper is twisted here, wonder if there is a vortex here? In Sedona they say the power vortexes twist the juniper trees. Another tree on the top that looked kind of like a bonzai tree.

John walking on the top of the headlands. A couple of natures glyphs and a corydalis flower.

There is a box canyon on top of the headland, here is the end of it. The WPA cut all these steps into to the sandstone. Very nice trail.

On top is an Indian pueblo theynamed Atsinna. They say it has 800 rooms, they only excavated 12 of them, two of which are kivas.

More of natures glyphs on the rocks. We stopped at the Zuni pueblo on back. It is the last surviving city of the seven cities of Cibola and the largest pueblo in New Mexico. I was disappointed to find that pueble means village, so it was mainly an indian village. They do tours of the ‘middle village’-the historic part including a mission, but not today, they are doing work on the mission. They don’t allow photos unless you buy a photo permit, so I didn’t take any. The Zuni are known for their artwork, esp inlay jewlery, but all the traders were closed.  On the way back we stopped at Winfeld trading to look at art, but did not buy anything.  Lovely work.  They have these old satellite dishes painted as indian baskets outside.

Speaking of baskets here is my master piece so far. The wrapping of the coils takes forever. The inner two took 4 hours, not even sure how long these longer upper ones have taken so far,but I have been working on them for a week.