Gehlke Family 2005 Southwestern Vacation travelogue -- Day 9

This is a market we stopped at in Tularosa, N.M., to pick up some sandwiches and supplies. Not to be confused with the home improvement chain of the same name, the place sold no lumber. Photo by Glenn.

On the way to Three Rivers Petroglyph Site this is what we see from the car. Lots of desert and a few small hills under an almost-spotless blue sky. Photo by Roni.

This is part of a gift shop at the junction of the road leading to Three Rivers. Roni spent much of our trip looking for one of these metal lizards to take home with us, but they were either the wrong size or the wrong price. Photo by Roni.

The front of the Three Rivers gift shop. They offered free Pinon coffee with any purchase. What is Pinon coffee? As far as we can tell it's some major gourmet coffee company from New Mexico similar to Starbucks. Photo by Roni.

It's another one of those long, lonely roads to the horizon. Somewhere out there is the entrance to... Photo by Roni.

...Three Rivers! Photo by Roni.

To see the petroglyphs you have to take this trail up the hill. We armed ourselves with water bottles and set out through the desert. Photo by Glenn.

Three Rivers provides a little brochure with pictures of 12 rock art specimens that are considered significant in some way. Each site is marked with a metal post and corresponding number, making the hike sort of like a scavenger hunt. This was No. 1. This circle symbol is a recurring theme at many Native American rock art sites. Photo by Glenn.

Ben photographs one of the rock artworks. You can meander off the trail, but most of the stuff worth seeing is right along the trail's edge. Photo by Glenn.

It's hard now to imagine a time when the New Mexico desert was a hotbed of volcanic activity. This is what remains of an ancient lava dome. Photo by Glenn.

Another of the petroglyphs at Three Rivers, this one resembles a running goat. I'd be running too if I were being pursued by hunters with spears. Photo by Glenn.

I'm not sure how authentic this one is. Did the ancients know about the Vietnam-era peace symbol? Or perhaps that's just my modern-day interpretation of it. There is, unfortunately, a fair amount of vandalism at this and other petroglyph sites. Photo by Glenn.

This is as close as we came to seeing a bald eagle on our trip. Roni is still looking for the real thing. Photo by Glenn.

Ben and Glenn take a break on one of the sheltered benches at the end of the trail. Photo by Roni.

It was too hot to see any wildlife on our walk, but these lizard drawings prove that some does exist — or once did. Photo by Glenn.

A human face. Surprisingly few of the rock art drawings were of identifiable human features. This is one of those included in the park's brochure. Photo by Glenn.

Another of the dozen petroglyps explained in the park brochure, this one is considered significant because it makes use of the contours of the rock to give the artwork dimension. You can see that this fellow's nose is actually a bump on the rock. Photo by Glenn.

Now you can see the metal markers that Three Rivers uses to denote points of interest. Ben is trying to copy some of the rock art for his journal that he was compiling for a school report. Photo by Glenn.

On the way out to I-25 from Three Rivers we pass through the Valley of Fire. It is so named because of the massive lava flow that covers about 350 square miles of the desert floor. Here is one of the wrinkled pahoehoe lava formations. Up close it looks sort of like a giant elephant turd. Photo by Roni.

A few old-time windmills still dot the landscape of the Southwest. This one is on a ranch near the Valley of Fire. We didn't see any livestock nearby. Photo by Glenn.

You have to love that sky. This is on Highway 380 heading west toward I-25. The sky here just seems to go on forever. Photo by Roni.

Here is the state historic marker for the Trinity Site, which was mentioned in yesterday's travelogue. The site is a few miles south of this point, but its access is restricted because it is part of the White Sands Missile Range. Tours are conducted the first Saturday in April and October. We missed it by a week. A couple of rock shops near here offer trinitite for sale. Photo by Glenn.

This is about the most we saw of Albuquerque. It doesn't feel as big as its 450,000 population might lead one to believe. We're on I-25 heading north toward Santa Fe. Photo by Roni.

Just outside Santa Fe the sun is beginning to set, creating some interesting light. It really brings out the shadows and natural features of the landscape on this hill. Photo by Roni.

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Celebrating the graffiti of the ancients

Sunday, September 25 (Day 9) — I've been listening to the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack by Philip Glass the past week as I've been doing these journal entries, and having seen the film of the same name several dozen times over the past two decades, I can say that it is the perfect mood music for this vacation. Many of the scenes in the movie were shot around the New Mexico desert, or have themes that relate to the things we have seen in our travels. One thing about the movie that has always fascinated me is its use of Indian petroglyphs during the opening and closing credits. The image is taken from a Hopi cave painting in Utah at a place called Horseshoe Canyon. We aren't going to make it as far as Utah on this trip, but there are a fair number of similar "rock art" sites along the route we have been following, and we toured one of them today on the drive north from Alamogordo to Santa Fe.

We got off to a slow start this morning, not leaving town until nearly 10 a.m. We followed Highway 70 until it became Highway 54 at Tularosa. We stopped in at a Lowe's market there to pick up some picnic supplies and more bottled water. We've been going through water at a rapid clip on this journey because of the scorching temperatures, so just about every day we have to begin by restocking the cooler with drinks and ice cubes. We've been naughty and filled the cooler from the hotel ice machine just once. Most of the time we've been getting the 7-pound bags of party ice that last us most of the day. We sort of have to laugh about seeing Lowe's stores out here, because we don't have them in the Bay Area and are used to seeing the name associated with the better-known Lowe's home improvement warehouse stores. The two couldn't be more dissimilar. The Lowe's in Tularosa barely qualifies as a supermarket. It carried all of the staple items, but without some of the fringes you find in bigger communities. There was no full deli counter, no bakery, no banking services. We picked up some seafood salad and a loaf of sliced french bread along with some other snack items. The most interesting thing about this place was that the entire alcoholic beverage section was roped off with a sign that said alcohol sales weren't allowed until noon Sunday. Gotta love those blue laws. I wasn't aware they had them in New Mexico.

We continued the drive northwest on Highway 54 until we reached the turnoff for Three Rivers Petroglyph Site next to a gift shop. We explored the shop long enough for Ben to buy several postcards and get a bite on the hand from the owner's cat that happened to be snoozing on one of the display tables. We were all amazed that it looked so much like a cross between our cats Ariel and Eevee that I guess Ben overlooked the fact that it bites like Eevee. It scraped him up pretty good, but he'll recover.

From the gift shop we drove about four miles to reach the park entrance, enjoying the view of the Sacramento Mountains and the two-lane road lined with rows of yellow flowers. The park is very primitive, but there are several covered picnic tables and a small visitor center. We paid our $2 admission and were greeted by the park ranger who provided us with a trail guide and pointed out what we should look for on the half-mile trail up into the hills. Three Rivers traces its roots back to sometime between 1000 and 1400 A.D., when thousands of petroglyphs were carved into the ancient volcanic rock. The trail guide claims there are about 21,400 carvings in the vicinity. Most of them you can't see from the trail, but those you can see are spectacular. There are suns, big horn sheep, faces, birds, lizards, geometric patterns — all looking as fresh as the day they were made. Unfortunately, some are fresh. Despite signs that ask people to respect the rocks, there is always some yahoo who has to spoil a good thing. There are several spots where modern day rock artists have tried to scratch in their initials or pictures. Which brings me to an interesting thought: We look at these drawings made a thousand years ago and today call them art. People do the same thing now with spray paint cans and we call it graffiti. I wonder how history will treat today's "street artists" hundreds of years from now. Do you suppose there will be museums set up around the cryptic messages scrawled on the sides of underpasses and railroad cars? I really hope not.

Ben is out of school for two weeks while we tour the Southwest, so to make up for his missed classroom time he is keeping a journal of the things he sees on the trip. He had to pay special attention to the petroglyphs because he is writing a report on their history. He was a bit reluctant at first. But once we got out on the trail he got into the whole game of trying to match the petroglyphs pictured in the trail guide to those we saw on the rocks. I think we managed to find all of them. I shot almost two cards worth of images of the artwork. Not quite sure what I'll do with all the photos yet, but I would love to turn them into something artistic when I get home.

Roni wasn't having quite as much fun on our walk, mainly because her allergies were bothering her and she was becoming winded on the steep trail. The high altitude may have had something to do with that. We all carried bottles of water with us, but it went quickly when the 90-degree heat began to work on us. She eventually made her way back to the trailhead while Ben and I wrapped up the walk several minutes later. Then we ate our picnic lunch before hitting the road for the rest of the drive. We had managed to stay a long time because of the trail walk, so it was coming close to 1:30 p.m. by the time we left. We still had more than 200 miles of driving to reach Santa Fe.

As I was driving back to Highway 54, I slowed for a cattle grate in the roadway but not enough for the railroad grade crossing just beyond. I hit the grade with enough speed to go airborne, sort of like Dukes of Hazzard. It was a pretty wild ride that woke everyone up and tossed the luggage around in the trunk of the car, but no major damage done (that I'm aware of!), just a few jangled nerves.

We made decent time the rest of the way. From Highway 54 we joined Highway 380 at Carrisozozo and followed that road west through the high desert and a place called Valley of Fire. The valley gets its name from a 5-mile wide, 70-mile long lava field from a volcanic eruption hundreds of years ago. The lava has hardened in many interesting shapes. Yucca trees and desert chaparral grow in the cracks. We pulled off to the shoulder a number of times, some just to take pictures and others to get out of the way of faster traffic. One thing I've noticed as we get closer to Albuquerque and Santa Fe is that highway speeds are picking up. I've been comfortable driving under 65 mph most of the trip, but there are folks who see those 75 mph limit signs and want to pass you at 85, which is starting to get scary.

I photographed a historical marker for the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945. One of the things I would really love to see out here in New Mexico is the obelisk that marks the blast site, but sadly it sits inside the White Sands Missile Range and is off limits to the public all but two days of the year — the first Sundays of April and October.

We bought gas and ice cream pops at a Phillips 66 station in Socorro before connecting with I-25 for the rest of the northward journey to Santa Fe. Gas is still pretty expensive in these parts, but I wound up filling the tank for $2.78 a gallon.

There isn't much to write about the rest of the drive. I-25 is the New Mexican equivalent of Interstate 5 through California. It gets you where you want to go quickly, but there isn't much scenery worth seeing while you're on it. Bernado, Belen, Los Lunas... all just blips on the map as they went zipping past our windows. We stopped at a rest area a few miles south of Albuquerque and were later thankful that we had once we got stuck in traffic about 40 miles south of Santa Fe because of a traffic accident. There are just 1.8 million people living in New Mexico, with most of them (400,000+) located in Albuquerque. I was expecting a lot more traffic around New Mexico's largest city, but there was very little. Granted, this was a Sunday afternoon, but I expected more. These cities have no suburbs to feed their populations. Perhaps it's just as well. Downtown Albuquerque appears to be trapped in its infancy, with just a few skyscrapers all clustered within perhaps a six-block radius. We only saw it from the freeway and may not get a closer look before we start heading home.

The traffic accident cleanup on our way to Santa Fe set us back about half an hour. Still, we were able to reach town in daylight. I was thankful, because it is much harder finding things in an unfamiliar community after dark. As it was, Roni forgot which hotel she had booked for us, so we wound up first at the wrong Comfort Inn. Our reservation was for Comfort Suites, a couple of miles closer to the center of the city. They put us in Room 205. I had sort of hoped for an upstairs room here, but where we are there isn't much of a view. There is a shopping center and a gas station nearby. Nothing worth taking pictures of.

We ordered spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner from a place called Home Run Pizza. Of course we couldn't finish it all, so there will be plenty of leftovers for tomorrow night.