We stopped in Gallup, NM, to visit our friend, Si, who was a wonderful hostess and tour guide.
She took us to see El Morro National Monument in New Mexico. This massive sandstone bluff rises over 200 feet and is a fascinating mixture of human and natural history. It was a welcome landmark and a reliable watering hole for desert travelers since the late 1500s.
Some of the flora and fauna at El Morro.
Spanish, and later, Americans passed by El Morro, and while they rested in its shade and drank from its pool, many carved their signatures, dates, and messages.
Before the Spanish, petroglyphs were inscribed by Ancestral Puebloans living on top of the bluff over 700 years ago.
La Tinaja restaurant, located 5 miles west of El Morro, is owned and operated by a fascinating 30-something Navajo who, while playing in the NFL Europe league, graduated from culinary school in Berlin, and in addition to speaking Navajo, Spanish and English, can take your order in French or German. When he returned to his native New Mexico, he started this restaurant which serves American and traditional Navajo dishes created from scratch with local, organic ingredients.
On our way back to Gallup, we drove through the village of San Rafael, with its mission church built in 1885.
As we drove out of San Rafael we passed these.
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