Pacific To Atlantic - Day 5 - Albuquerque NM

Dec 27, 2008 Saturday - next day
RoadTrip Diary - Day 5 - Albuquerque NM

Though the fear of bad weather is already over, was still watching local news channel. Weather in great plains seems interesting.. Winds ~50mphs at South of Santa Rosa and ~65mph at west of Tucumcari, near TX border... 50mph ???.. just can't believe it..

Checked out of Best western around 8:30am...

Found nice breakfast place "Village Inn" on Route-66..almost similar to Dennys.. not much crowded, but people around seemed different.. sort of native, but were in cowboys/cowgirls style.. Seemed to be in land of great plains... Experienced it just by sitting in local restaurant :)

Quick drive on Route66 towards Petroglyphs National Historic Park..

Petroglyphs NHP indeed gives glimpse of "Land of Enchantment".. NHP has Petroglyphs done by local native indian tribe: Pubelos.. around 20000 in NHP. We decided to visit "Bongo??" canyon, which hosts around 300 petroglyphs. The ranger at NHP, Ed, gave good overview of what petroglyphs are. These are delicate carvings on Lava rock. The lava rock seemed to have multiple layered textures.. Outer layer with Grey color, middle one with lil bit white-yellowish, while inner one to be orange-brownish in color..So all Petroyglpyhs are carvings made on these rocks...all in yellowish-orange.. also most of the petroglphys are from 800-900 AD, while few of them carved by spanish invaders from 18th Centuries..

In the Bongo canyon, we browsed through three trails.. Mesa, Macaw and Cliff Base trail. Mesa trail was just too windy. Temp was around 32F, but because of wind, it was horribly cold.. Mesa trail have few interesting boulders.. Lava texture was clearly visible.. The boulders near begining of the trail have nice petroglpyhs.. shapes like human, animals and symbols like spirals.. some spanish petroglyphs of Christian cross shapes in squares are visible.. The top of the hill didn't have much..

Macaw was a small trail.. It has few petryglphys as compared to mesa or cliff base trail... but these are clear and sharp glpyhs.. very neatly drawn.. macaw sketch and multiple yucca corn fruit pictures are easily identifiable.. Also humanized tortoise petroglpyh was interesting concept..

The last trail "Cliff Base" has some different petrogpyhs.. Army Warrrior.. Human shape with ornaments.. star shaped face, but its right eye vandalized.. Square shaped humans.. Circle shaped face... Tortoise.. Snake.. Spiral.. Birds.. just too many petroglphys..

This trail also has lot of vandalized petroglpyphs.. Shape of skeleton.. all original petroglyphs are orange-brown in color, while new ones are grey in color.. its mainly because of the change in color of original glyphs over the long period of time..

Visit to Petroglyphs shows huge contrast with our Ajanta-Ellora caves.. probably Ajanta-Ellora are much older than these petroglphys, but they are way rich, beautiful, colorful, insightful and shows India's golden age.. at that time, american landscape was just nomadic. Talk abt transition of superpowers..

Contrastic thoughts with restroom icons as petrogplhys :)

Visited old town.. shows real mexican culture.. It had similar feeling of Tulshibaag market in Pune.. visited 1780's church.. well maintained.. renovated in 1927.. Souvenir shop in old-town was really huge.. it also had lot of weird goodies..


Had nice lunch at a Mexican restaurant.. "Casa De Fiesta"...blue corn enchiladas.. simply delicious.. Meha's drink had almost all fruits :).. Spent hell lot of time finishing lunch.. just catching up with Sitaram..

Drove thru downtown on Route66.. really well maintained.. lot of historic route66 signs, showing the legacy.. Near small town of Santa Rosa on Route66 visited Joseph's Fat Man club cafe.. another route66 oddity.. Again, had interesting discussions with Sitaram and Meha.. practicality vs idealism vs short-term vision in routine life..

by the time we left Santa rosa, winds had picked up heavily..

By the time we visited Tucumcari, it was getting dark.. really small place.. almost everything was already closed.. few interesting neon signs as mentioned in the roadtrip guide.. "Pow wow" restaurant.. "Golden dragon".. "Thingys" restaurant.. At such a small place, surprised to see indian family on a gas station. infact there were few advt of panjabi dhaba nearby..

while driving towards Texas, had a drive-thru astro session :) orion constellation.

Entered Texas around 6:35pm MST and timezone consumed one hour in few seconds :) 7:35CST...

Observed minor cellular network planning glitches, while crossing the state border. Verizon vs Sprint.. Verizon cellphone timezone changed 5 miles before border.. while sprint didn't change the timezone till 12miles after state border.. hmm..

Reached Amrillo TX around 9pm.. Huge city..but seems like lot of tourist because of saturnday night.. had tough time finding a motel..After hunting 7-8 motels, finally got into local fifth season inn.. It took more than hour.. during the process, scratched the car in La-quinta parking lot while reversing.. i guess I was too frustrated because of motel hunting..Good to have LDW.. the only casualty of the roadtrip :)..

Late night dinner.. Wanted to try local "Texas roadhouse BBQ", but no vegetarian food.. obviously.. so ended up at usual place.. IHop.. overall it was just too late to go to bed came back around 12:30pm.. no enthu of writing diary either.. so witting it a day later..

Today's Drive: 310 miles
States: NM, TX

Total Miles: 1760 miles in five days
Total States (7) : CA, NV, UT, AZ, CO, NM, TX