EL MORO NATIONAL MONUMENT
Our first visit the next morning was to El Moro National Monument, which we frankly had never heard of before. It turned out that El Moro was blessed with a deep pool of water, collected from rainfall from the adjacent Mesa which proved to be a virtual oasis for travelers in this area for hundreds and hundreds of years. El Moro was noted for an area of rock wall next to the oasis where resting travelers had chosen to carve messages over the years. The earliest carvings were a large number of assorted Indian pictographs. The earliest non-Indian inscriptions date back to early Spanish travelers in the early 
1600s. Some carvings were merely names and dates, while others were short messages describing the travels being undertaken, (e.g., a Spanish provincial governor describing his trip to and from the Gulf of California). Most startling were signatures and short messages carved into stone in beautiful script writing style that must have taken days to carve with special tools as well as the artistic ability to use them. But the writers achieved a small degree of immortality since here we were reading their inscriptions hundreds of years later.
As an added bonus, El Moro contains pueblo Indian ruins on top of the mesa adjacent to the oasis and the “inscription rock” area. A short but vigorous hike up led us not only to the pueblo ruins but gave us a great view of the surrounding countryside.EL MALPAIS NATIONAL MONUMENT
Only a short distance down the road from El Moro was a totally different type of national monument. El Malpais NM is a very large park containing lava fields resulting from numerous volcanic eruptions. In addition to walking across lava fields and viewing the collapsed domes at the sites of some of the eruptions, we were introduced to “lava tubes.” Apparently, during many of the eruptions, the lava flowed in channels or rivers rather than as a broad mass moving down the slopes. A typical pattern would be for the outer areas of the channel or river to cool off and harden while molten lava continued to flow through the space inside. After the lava had flowed out of these channels, it left behind hollow “lava tubes.” Many of these tubes have since been covered over with sediment, turning them into virtual caves. In some spots, the roof of the lava tube had collapsed, forming a sink hole which allowed us to look down into the lava tube from the surface. The park service strongly warned against going into any of the lava tubes/caves without proper caving equipment and experience. Against Jo’s very strong objection, David decided to walk through a short stretch of a lava tube which had caved in and formed two sink holes only one hundred yards apart. Climbing over the boulders that had fallen down from the roof of the lava tube amply demonstrated how difficult the journey would be to travel any extended distances in one of the lava tubes/caves. But it was exciting to see what these tubes actually look like inside.We didn’t start on our hike into the lava fields until late in the afternoon, which had two benefits. First, we had the trail entirely to ourselves and did not see anyone else during the entire hike. Second, when we got back to the trailhead at the end of the hike, we were treated to a beautiful sunset which we could enjoy in solitude. What a wonderful ending to a surprising delightful day.
CHACO CULTURE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
The next day we were up early for our planned trip up to Chaco Culture National Historic Site. The GPS said it was a 2 ½ hour trip, and we wanted to get up there in enough time to join Kelley’s tour which was scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m. We were coming up from the south and were forced to take a secondary road, the last 20 miles of which was on a rough dirt road. Boy did we bounce up and down on those rough surfaces. But we weathered the road hazard and made it to Chaco in time.
It was a delight to meet up again with our friend Kelley, whom we hadn’t seen since our last high school reunion in 2004. It was wonderful to see her in the setting at Chaco since it took her back to her long time roots in New Mexico and her love of anthropology, which had been the subject of her master’s degree from the University of New Mexico. After introducing us to several of the rangers on staff at the park she took us up to Pueblo Bonito, the premier location in the park and the site of her scheduled 10am tour. The ruins alone are enough to impress any visitor to this remote park. Even more astonishing, 
however, was the information that Kelley’s excellent presentation provided us and the other visitors on the tour, about the Chaco culture. As far back as 800 AD, pueblo Indians had been active at Chaco Canyon. For reasons that anthropologists still do not understand, this culture exploded in a massive development effort which boggles the mind even today. They built a number of roads, each 30 feet wide, going off in numerous directions from the canyon –- no one even today can explain why they went to the immense extra effort to build roads 30 feet wide when they didn’t even have wagons in that era. 
In Pueblo Bonito, one of the premier buildings constructed during this boom period, they built a huge number of rooms, many of which were apparently never occupied as dwellings and may never have been used even for storage purposes. No one knows why they built such a large structure or just what they were doing with many of the rooms in the structure. Moreover, particularly during the later stages of construction, the stonework was done with exquisite care even though the artisans knew that it would be covered up with adobe plaster and hidden from view. We have the question, but no answer, as to how and why this culture invested such tremendous effort in building these magnificent structures, and how it was done in an area so arid as to make it difficult to identify how this society could support the extravagance of such a large “public works” project. And why did virtually all of the inhabitants abandon Chaco Canyon less than 100 years after having made such a great sacrifice in building these magnificent structures?
After our tour with Kelley was over, she was required to leave us to go back to the visitor’s center. We went off on our own to explore more of Chaco Canyon. One of the highlights of our afternoon was the hike we took up onto the mesa above Pueblo Bonito. At first, we weren’t sure just how the trail got to the top of the mesa since it seems to disappear into the rock wall. After we were 1/3 of the way up the trail, however, we found that it passed between a 2-3 foot wide fissure between the main rock wall of the mesa and a large rock face which had split away from the main mesa wall. While Jo was initially 
hesitant to try this ascent, she yielded to David’s urging and made the valiant effort to climb to the top of the mesa, with the benefit of periodic boosts from David pushing up from below. The journey was definitely worth the effort as the views from the top of the mesa were superb. Particularly lovely was to sit on the mesa looking down at Pueblo Bonito from above and gaining an even greater appreciation for the magnificent effort made in constructing this structure.Although we had initially planned to drive back that evening to Gallup and have Kelley stay with us in our Big Sky, we were having such a good time visiting with her in her park service duplex that we decided to stay the night. In addition to great conversation and catching up on what’s been happening with all of us recently, we were treated to an extra bonus. Because of its location in a remote spot far from any light pollution, Chaco has been the focus of many who seek a great view of the stars. One of these was an amateur astronomer who donated to the park several telescopes with the proviso that he could use them when he came to the park. We were able to benefit from his generosity by being able to look through two of these telescopes to see a variety of astronomical features, including the Homer’s comet, a seldom noticed comet which has gotten substantial attention in the last week because it had suddently increased its visability by a factor of one million (for reasons unknown) in the last few days. While we appreciated being able to view the comet and other stars through these telescopes, David was heard to say that the comet really just looked like a fuzzy snowball.
The next morning, Kelley joined us on our trip back to Gallup. Indeed, Kelley and Jo led the way in Kelley’s car while David strove valiantly to keep up with these fast women. It turns out that, for drivers experienced in handling rough dirt roads, the preferred solutions to pot holes and washboard surfaces is to drive over them at a high rate of speed so that you skim across the top rather than dip in and out of the low spots. The theory seemed to work in practice, although it left David a nervous wreck. When we finally made back to Gallup, the women went shopping while David went back to the Big Sky to settle his nerves with a good supply of wine. Indeed he called Jo to recommend that she stop off in route and buy more wine. The wine came in handy as the three of us spent the afternoon and evening in taking about life past and present.
ZUNI PUEBLO
The next day the three of us went down to Zuni Pueblo to visit a center of current Native American culture. Little did David know that a principle focus of this trip would turn out to be visiting a number of shops and places of business which focused on selling Zuni jewelry, fetishes, pottery and other items. We were unable to take a hoped for guided tour of Zuni Pueblo itself because the tour guide had decided to take the afternoon off and took with her the keys to the church in the heart of the Pueblo which was the primary focus of the guided tour. We nonetheless drove over to the neighborhood of the pueblo with the intent of walking around the perimeter of the pueblo so that we could see at least a portion of it. While on this walk, we happened upon two young Native American girls returning the pueblo from a nearby grocery store. They invited us into the pueblo to view some dolls that their father had made and was offering for sale. We were delighted to accept this invitation to go into the heart of the pueblo as we were otherwise under the impression that this area was off limits to tourists. The products that the father had to offer were of poor quality, and we reluctantly declined to buy anything from him. However, both the walk into this area of the pueblo with the young Native American girls and our walk back out on our own gave us a good opportunity view the pueblo. It was a disappointment. Virtually all of the buildings appeared to be in a very poor state of repair and to exhibit little or no architectural interest. We were not able to go inside the church in the center of the pueblo which was reputed to have wonderful murals. Instead, we were left with a view of the outside of the church, which reflected major deterioration of the structure no doubt due to the lack of economic resources to maintain the structure.After leaving the pueblo area, we visited the nearby Zuni Museum, which was a delight. Although clearly operating on a limited budget, the museum offered us a valuable glimpse into Zuni history and culture. At the end of our visit to the museum, we enjoyed watching a series of old, silent, black and white films capturing various aspects of historical Zuni life, including the backing of bread the making of soap/shampoo from yucca plants.
On our way out of town, we followed the signs advertising a bakery selling Zuni bread. This turned out to be an operation run out of a nearby home where the bread and pastries were made up in a fairly modern home kitchen but then backed in a traditional adobe oven outside which had been heated with a wood fire. We bought two loaves of bread and turnovers for each of us – the bread we had later that evening, but the turnovers we consumed immediately. For reasons unclear, as we walked around the back yard eating our turnovers and looking at the adobe ovens outside, the neighboring dogs crowded around David in the apparent assumption that he would share with them his turnover. While laughing out loud, Jo snapped a number of pictures of David willfully refusing the pleading expressions on the dogs’ faces as he ate his turnover despite their obvious desire to share it with him. What a hoot!!!After a delightful dinner that night, and more wine, Kelley headed back to Chaco since she had to open the visitor’s center early the next morning. We said a fond farewell and drowned our sorrows in another glass of wine while planning out trip the next day to Santa Fe.
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