April 28 Valley of Fire lava fields to Grants, NM

April 28 Valley of Fire lava fields to Grants, NM

The morning started with another walk through the lava fields. 70F and sunny - can't get much better. Many of the cactus are blooming and it is so unusual to see these plants growing up through lava.

This walk was along what was basically a paved boardwalk through the lava. It's about a mile and a half one way and took quite a while since we were enjoying the scenery.

The National Parks and BLM sites get it right with a lot of good information posts along the way where you get basic info on the plants and animals. Fortunately we didn't encounter any snakes or tarantulas but so a lot of birds and ground squirrels. During the night we had heard the coyotes off in the distance. There were places where you could walk out onto the lava and look down into the crevices and bat caves. (Notice the North East Truck Camper shirt!)

The truck camper was a welcome sight coming back. Joe had a great time talking to the ranger who was also retired Coast Guard. I met a woman from Hawaii who was touring the USA and Canada in a VW bus. Out came all the maps to give her some tips of places to see in Maine and Nova Scotia. You really meet interesting people along the way.

We passed by the White Sands Missile Range on the way to Route 25. No activity we could see but lots of heavily barb wired fences. We took 26 to get to Albuquerque and the Petroglyph National Monument. I don't want to live in a city as large as Albuquerque. Even skirting it to get to the petroglyphs reminded us of how much we don't like to travel in a big city.

This is not one of the better places we have visited for history. It is surrounded by housing developments, traffic, noise and odd smells. We quickly headed west on I-40 to Grants, NM and I finally got wifi good enough to load photos on my travel blog. Tomorrow we go to El Morro and El Malipas which are geological formations settled by both the early Indians and the Spanish settlers, then on to Chaco Canyon. We had stopped at the Northern NM state tourist center to get detailed info on all three sites. The rangers told us not to go in the southern route to Chaco as the cattle guards had been replaced and many trying to go that route had punctured tires. I'm disappointed as Ted and Cheryl had told us tales of the road in but I think in this case, prudence will win over.