The ice cave and the volcano. the badlands. Grants. the long road to Taos.
Friday, 9.28.01
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Got up at 7ish and had a surprisingly good breakfast of omelette, biscuits, and coffee at the diner-like restaurant just through the lobby of El Rancho Hotel. Got directions to the nearest camera store and poked around town while waiting for the camera store to open at 9am. Once open it proved to be a great place for photo supplies, though a great photography store in Gallup isn't really surprising given the number of pro photographers who pass through here. Picked up more film, a new lithium battery, and a second lens cap to replace the one I misplaced in the Grand Canyon. I think I know where I left it, about a mile from the river up the Bright Angel Trail where the series of switchbacks take you up above the stream crossings, so if anyone comes across it let me know.
By a quarter past nine I was heading south on the small country road 602 to east on 53, to avoid the interstate and take in some new scenery. The El Morro National Monument was closed for construction, saving me the trouble of deciding whether I wanted to see it. Stopped at a very small family restaurant on the side of the road for some really good coffee and homemade banana bread, and thanks to road construction arrived at my next destination around 11.
Of the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano Crater I was most excited about the ice cave, which never rises above 31F, and contains a floor of 20 foot-thick ice, some of which is 3400 years old. I paid a small admission fee at the privately-owned visitor center and gift shop, then set out on the short hiking trail to the ice cave. This area is known as El Malpais - the badlands, so named because it's based on a vast lava field and anything that grows here does so out of or around the black, broken rocky terrain. Compasses aren't supposed to work here because of the intense magnetic content of the rock. If I'd remembered to take out the compass I would've seen for myself.
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The trail to the volcano is much longer, rising gradually on higher ground, and eventually winding up the side of the crater to offer a spectacular view of the badlands. The trail passes collapsed hillside and oddly-gnarled trees, some blackened by lightning strikes, which are common here on account of the ground's rich iron content. Smaller craters appear in the distance. The view of the inside of the crater is really impressive in a different way that the meteor crater was. It's not as wide as the meteor crater, but it rises higher above the ground and it is, after all, a volcano. And the fact that it last erupted only ten thousand years ago does lend a certain sense of immediacy.
Around 1:00 I arrived in Grants, which reminded me of Gallup as it was a more modernized Route 66 town. Stopped for lunch at the Monte Carlo Cafe, a small diner right off Route 66. Nobody else was eating lunch, but there were three women and a boy laughing and having a really good time with local gossip. Had a truly fantastic Navajo taco, vegetables, beans, cheese, sauce, and sour cream served on Navajo fry bread. And coffee. Of course.
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Arrived in Taos around 6:30, and headed straight for a fantastic bed & breakfast called Stewart House Bed & Breakfast. The woman who runs it is super-cool and knows evrything that's going on in town. She cooks you a real breakfast, and you get access to the hot tub under the stars. The room was big and comfy and I wish I could have stayed for more than one night.
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Drove the short distance back to the B and went to bed early so I could get up early and go to the pueblo.
Day Nine, Taos, NM to Santa Fe:
tourist rant. Taos Pueblo. party in Santa Fe.
