WST Day 15: Lava Walking and La Ventana

I've concluded that a huge portion of road-tripping is the in-car speculating about what is seen as you travel. We spied these dirt mounds past Gallup, NM off I-40 this morning. At first we thought they were a housing of some sort. No, Nancy checked them out with the binoculars and reported the utter lack of roads or trails and that they resembled dirt mounds. I, of course, googled and  discovered Fort Wingate has storage facilities for "demilitarizing" weapons material before recycling them. AHA! Drat! FB was correct again as his guess was "something military - the lines are too straight for anything else." Down the road a bit, we spied two parallel plumes of white smoke rising from behind a hill. I suggested controlled burn. Nance disagreed, explaining about how smoke looked. FB drove. Binocular use, again, proved the plumes were coming from stacks near a HUGE building.   How could anyone be bored in a car?

Last night FB suggested we visit El Malpais National Monument between Gallup and Albuquerque, after all Nancy needs another stamp on her National Parks Passport.

El Malpais is Spanish for "The Badlands." These badlands are sandstone cliffs and volcanic lava tubes, caves and flows. I was more concerned with the multitudinous rattlesnake notifications.

The Sandstone Bluffs over looked lava tubes and caves (the hole remnants of former volcanic eruptions). The cliff was an experience. Nancy even braved her fear of heights to venture to the cliff top for a while.

 

Although you have to look closely, you can see the hole left by the eruption as the volcano kind of collapsed on itself millions of years ago. remember, we are hundreds of feet up on the top of the bluff and I declined to get too close to the unfenced-off edge.

When we spoke with the Ranger, I opted (vociferously) not to explore the caves and the tubes, so Nance had to bit the bullet on seeing an ice cave in New Mexico.





On the plus side, we saw a couple of bands of wild ponies and a big ole deer ran across the road and jumped the fence separating the National Park lands from the Acoma Reservation and the National Conservation area.

Lava is amazing. and seems to provide a fertile growing base. We saw so much yarrow growing on the lava berms (really, lava tubes) abutting the roadway, that Nancy quipped, "That shit is like the kudzu of New Mexico!"

We drove to the Lava Falls and thoroughly enjoyed walking on lava. Even though I expected a waterfall type scene, the flows went on for yards and yards. We could have explored for a long while but I was skittish about those danged rattlesnakes while I was in shorts and Sketchers.

Next we climbed the path/trail to view  La Ventana (The Window).

This arch faces I-40 and the place is so quiet, you can hear the cars zooming by in the distance as the sound rebounds off the rock face.

El Malpais also offered a flowering cactus which was off set by the experience of using a toilet that was propped open with a 20 pound chunk of sandstone. (No picture of that!) I sang aloud, just in case anyone came near.

An aside: in regard to national park toilets, ALWAYS wait for the ones marked for handicap users as they have a stool device for sitting; the non-handicap user ones have a pit.

We arrived in Santa Fe full of promise and anticipation to be met by streets so narrow and twisty a Bostonian would have choked, THEN the sky darkened and the rains fell for quite awhile. We felt no good vibe and went to hotel after a brief stop at Larry's Wine Barn for some New Mexican grape.

Nancy leaves tomorrow. The car will not be the same without her. I even got accustomed to sleeping in the same room with her - a HUGE compliment (to us both!)