Day 10: Albuquerque, New Mexico to Gallup, New Mexico

19 September. Gallup, New Mexico. Midnight.

Executive Summary: Albuquerque, Isleta Pueblo, Grants, Gallup. 1:30 start; 6:30 finish; 184 miles. Another great day: time with friends and views from Sandia Peak, fascinating uranium mining museum in Grants, gorgeous red rocks scenery en route to Gallup, and an evening catching up with roadtrip friends at the historic El Rancho Hotel. We’re all crammed into the Jackie Cooper room (#117 – they’re all named after movie stars who’ve stayed here in the past while on site for various movies). Everyone else is long asleep already, and I’m about to join them on a droopy little cot next to the bathroom.

I slept like a rock at Doc and Kathy’s, wakening around 6am and relaxing in bed another hour before rising to visit with them and the uncles while awaiting everyone’s readiness for our morning activities. Doc and Kathy wanted to take me for a run/hike up Sandia Peak, atop which we would meet everyone else (they would take the tram up) for lunch at 11:00. We left around 8:45, driving to a parking area for the La Luz Trail. We spent the next 2 hours ascending Sandia Peak, enjoying amazing views out over Albuquerque, then looking down over the clouds, and finally prancing through a fairly-like mist closer to the peak. Doc and Kathy, both having found each other later in life, are blissfully matched, and both sincerely enjoy working out and staying fit; it was fun to visit with both of them as we made our way up the trail, catching up and discussing topics ranging from all of our divorce experiences to fitness regimes to weightlifting.

I spent much of the climb kicking myself for not having brought along my camera. The views were incredible, and I would have loved to have preserved a few of them in pictures, as well as to get some shots of the 3 of us on the trail. We did run into some friendly hikers from the area who patiently agreed to take a few pictures of us on their camera, promising to send them via email later. None of us had along a pen or pencil to write down email addresses, but one of them thought to use her cell phone to save the info, and I feel sure that she’ll follow through.

Dad was waiting when we emerged from the trail to snap our pictures; then we joined the rest of the group at the restaurant, called High Finance. The fog by then had rolled in so thickly that it enveloped the entire peak, obscuring any view, but we enjoyed a big lunch before catching a tram down, glad to note that the clouds were thinning enough to get some view before doing so.

All 7 of us crammed into the Skyliner together to retrieve Doc and Kathy’s car from the trailhead before returning to their place to pick up Mom and Dad’s rig and the rest of our stuff. We said our goodbyes and were on our way, dropping south on Tramway to connect to Central Avenue and resume our westward progress along Route 66. There, local revitalization projects have done wonders in preserving and maintaining charming shops and businesses in the downtown area. There was almost too much to absorb in the hustle and bustle as we zoomed along Central past numerous still-operating diners and cafes, although motel properties have fared less well – but places like the De Anza, El Vado, and La Posada are well kept, and we had fun spotting the 1931 Aztec Motel, the giant lumberjack-style axe-man giant south of Louisiana, and various vintage business facades in the Nob Hill Historic district, marked at each end by gateway arches. Slowing in heavy traffic near the fairgrounds, we realized that the state fair was underway.

Heading south on I-25, we made our way next to Isleta Pueblo, an enchanting mission church and plaza on reservation land. The whitewashed adobe of the mission towered cool and majestic over its surroundings, where the locals were wise enough to stay inside out of the heat, their faces peering curiously at us through windows in the single-story adobe buildings surrounding the mission church.

I had thought that the mining museum at Grants sounded interesting, and everyone else seemed interested as well, so I called ahead during our drive south to Isleta – dismayed to learn that the museum would close at 4pm. It was now 2:30, and we were a good 80 miles away, and with tentative plans to follow a southwesterly loop from Albuquerque before turning northwest back up to I-40 and continuing west to Grants. A quick conference over the walkie-talkies, and we decided to revise that plan, doing an about-face after Isleta Pueblo to turn due north, retracing our path back up to Albuquerque and shooting west on I-40, making tracks for Grants. We would miss out on Los Lunas and Correo, but according to the guide books and the maps we had obtained from the state chamber of commerce, there wasn’t a lot to see that direction anyway, so we decided to make the trade-off.

The next hour was nail-biting as I constantly monitored our progress and watched the clock, calculating how long it would take us to reach Grants. I called back to the warm-sounding woman who answered the phone at the mining museum, keeping her updated of our progress and eventually pleading with her to keep the doors open a little longer for us. She cheerfully agreed to do so, and when we arrived, she greeted us warmly – and didn’t even charge us admission, since we would have to hurry through the exhibits (although they wound up making more from us than they would have through admission fees, since everyone dropped more in the donation box than they would have collected in fees).

Even as we drove in hurried suspense, we couldn’t help but observe the changing landscape around us. New Mexico’s people are drawn to earth-toned adobe homes and buildings incorporating Pueblo Revival, Southwest Vernacular, and Streamlined Moderne architectural styles. Heading west from the Albuquerque area, we noticed an endless sea of brown stucco/adobe houses that all looked alike, so much that Tom observed ironically that it might be tough to find your house if you came home after having a few too many drinks!

This day illustrated for us New Mexico’s cultural, topographical, and vegetative diversity: it is a place wide-shouldered enough to encompass the distant mesas of the high desert and the towering peaks of the southern Rockies; a land where Ponderosa and pinon pine and juniper trees bask beneath flawlessly blue skies in brilliant sunshine, mild winters, and low humidity, and it accommodates a burgeoning multi-cultural population.

The New Mexico Mining Museum proved to be well worth the effort to get there (at which I was immensely relieved, having felt like I sort of pushed the rest of the group into it based on my own mere inclination to want to get there). We began with a 12-minute video presentation providing an overview of the uranium mining process and explaining its efficiency in processing 4 pounds per ton of uranium into 86% of usable fuel in the finished product. Cold war era uranium mining was big in this region, and the facility provided us a glimpse at a typical mine (one story underground) in addition to fossil and Route 66 exhibits. We learned that the Ambrosia Lake mining area extended from Grants all the way east to Laguna, which we had passed during our westward zoom along I-40 (noticing its picturesque San Jose Mission on a village hilltop there). Going underground into the mine, we were treated to great audio-visual exhibits that walked us through the entire mining process from drilling to extraction in an extremely well-organized and well-implemented presentation.

Back upstairs we visited at some length with the docent, who introduced herself as Sarah Webb and proved extremely knowledgeable and as interesting and informative as the museum itself. She encouraged us to read about the 1979 Church Rock disaster, discussing the ongoing controversy regarding continued mining in the area and the competing concerns raised by tribal elders of the Navajo nation, understandably concerned about health and safety issues raised by reported elevated levels of certain cancers and other illnesses in addition to direct exposures and mining accidents, vs. the 50% unemployment rate on the reservation and the many tribal members who would love to be able to work at the jobs that mining could provide. I admired the way she spoke openly, yet fairly and objectively, about a topic that must be sensitive to everyone in the area and easy to take sides – and she inspired all of us to want to learn more about the local situation. What a wonderful ambassador not only for the museum, but for this area, the mining industry, and the entire state of New Mexico!

From Grants we were able to proceed at a more leisurely pace for the rest of the afternoon, rolling past Prewitt (spotting a small building covered in hubcaps, home to "Swap Meet 66"), Thoreau (pronounced "threw" by locals), in which all that remains is the faded facade of the Thunderbird Bar, bearing the remnants of a faded mural of a flying hawk and pink cliffs and proclaiming its elevation (7263 feet) and location, and on to the Continental Divide, where we stopped to take a group photo in front of the signpost marking 7275 feet elevation.
The final run into Gallup provided a breathtaking panorama of colorful rock cliffs and spires including the easily-identifiable Church Rock and numerous red rock formations all along the way.

I was excited to see Gallup, a town that might seem uninteresting if not in the context of a Route 66 journey. One of the guidebooks enticed, "More than most cities on the highway, Gallup maintains a sense of the Route 66 era. Little has been lost . . . Gallup has something few other places on Route 66 can claim – a longtime Hollywood connection. From Redskin, filmed in 1929, to the more recent adventures of Superman, the Gallup area has provided unequaled movie scenery. And El Rancho Hotel, now beautifully and responsibly restored, was the on-location home to stars like Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart, Hayworth, Flynn, and Peck. A production designer’s dream, the hotel at first looks like an architectural collision between Mount Vernon and a backlot set for Viva Villa. There’s even an Uncle Remus Wishing Well out front. Still, the overall effect is both inviting and absolutely right. How could it be otherwise?"

Entering Gallup, we saw the sharp, slanted ridge of the Hogback slashing across the east end of the town. That barrier, breached naturally at this point, apparently made the city a cold war nuke target during the heat of the Cold War, when it was realized that a single bomb could take out US 66, the railroad, pipelines, and communications. Despite the cold war’s passing, there remains much evidence there of old 66, including many old motels with nice neon like the Blue Spruce, the Lariat, and the famous 1937 El Rancho Hotel – at which we had a reservation for one of the rooms, all of which are named after movie star guests. It was easy to understand why so many westerns were filmed here, from the curving twin staircases to the second-floor balcony overlooking its impressive lobby, massive stone fireplace, enormous longhorns, and heavy carved wooden trim everywhere. I loved it immediately, and was thrilled that we were staying.

Our friends since Amarillo’s Big Texan, the group of 44 Harley riders, were there as well: we saw their bikes clustered under a portico near where we parked out front, and several of them wandered over to say hello while we enjoyed a picnic dinner at a table in a pleasant courtyard just outside the hotel, next to the wooden wishing well. Tom, Don, and I headed across the street to stock up on beer and fine wine (Boone’s Farm) while Mom & Dad set out cheese, crackers, and other assorted munchies, and all of us lingered until after dark, enjoying our snack, the pleasant evening air, our British friends, and each other’s company (most of the time). :) We did have one of those it’s-funny-later-but-not-at-the-time moments when Dad started arguing with me for no reason; I pointed out that I didn’t appreciate it; with an ensuing fairly heated argument over whether there was anything to argue about in the first place.

All of us also engaged in a discussion that has been ongoing most of this trip, debating "to crush or not to crush," referring to the aluminum cans we’ve been emptying of their pop and beer contents. Michigan has a 10¢ deposit on each one – but that’s available only when the can is intact. Since they’ll be driving back to Michigan at the end of this trip anyway (and with plenty of space!), most of us see no reason not to save the cans for the refund. Dad – ever the moral stickler – doesn’t feel like he should collect a deposit that he didn’t pay on cans purchased in other states. Tom and Don are accustomed to simply tossing their cans: in California, the trash is sorted to remove the recyclables, while Tom gave up on sorting at all at his home in Minnesota after watching the trash and recycles being picked up by the same company... and dumped into the same bin. Regardless, we all immensely enjoyed giving Dad a hard time about throwing away 10¢ repeatedly.

We toasted another great day and those yet to come. From here we should have another easy day on to Holbrook, then a few tougher ones as we press westward toward Kingman, Oatman, Barstow, and eventually, Los Angeles. No more homestays with friends along the way; it’ll be just the 4 of us from here – although Don mentioned that his son Brian is interested in meeting us upon our arrival at Santa Monica, which would be fun! I bought pink champagne so that we’ll be prepared to properly celebrate the occasion. :)

We all agree that as interesting as the sights and places we’ve seen and been have been the people along the way, from Paul Adams greeting us in Atlanta, Illinois to Robin Webb at the New Mexico Mining Museum and everyone else along the way. It has been especially heartwarming to be taken into the homes of several friends along the way, reminding me of one of my favorite Bible verses, from Hebrews 13:2: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." I certainly am not (by any means!) saying that we are angels – but these people along the way (Brad & Monica in Chicago, Mark & Leslie in Oklahoma City, Steve & Cindy in Elk City, Larry & Jeré in Amarillo, and Doc & Kathy in Albuquerque) who have unhesitatingly opened their hearts and homes to a group of five traveling strangers are demonstrating precisely the kind of golden-rule kindness and Good Samaritan generosity for which I believe we all should strive. If everyone treated one another so well, our world would be a better, brighter place for sure... and I feel fortunate to have encountered so many people who are so open of heart and mind as to befriend me as a stranger – and proud to introduce such people to my family, and vice-versa.