January 11, 2010

Happy birthday to my grandson, Brandon, who is 16 today.

Today is the beginning of Budd's second week of work here, and I suspect we'll be counting the days before the six weeks are up. But so far, everything is new and interesting, though I can imagine getting very tired of not being able to run down to the store for just anything we want. Budd has found quite an interesting variety of things that need doing for the park. As he has begun to dig into how the server is wired and backed up, he's found that it is going to have to be completely revamped to be reliable. So now he's in his element.

We went to Gallup, NM for the weekend, some to shop and some to try out the Fire Rock Navajo Casino for a little entertainment. The restaurant at the casino had some of the best, fork-tender pork baby back ribs I've ever tasted, and a passable band doing mostly country songs. I wasn't impressed by the table games, though. I hate those new electronic shoes that take 6 or more decks and continually shuffle them. It messes up the odds, and my usual (almost) flawless play and money management schemes didn't prevent me from losing too fast. So I quit playing, and Budd had decided not to start, which made for a relatively early night.

We had quite a variety of items on our shopping list, which meant braving Walmart for one-stop shopping. The one in Gallup is probably the only one for two hundred miles in any direction, and Saturday shopping meant that there were about 5,000 people in there. I didn't count, of course, but they definitely needed traffic lights at all the major aisle intersections.

Speaking of traffic lights, Gallup's are odd, with the green left-turn arrow to the right of the red. Budd was transfixed, trying to figure out why they would make them that way, when someone behind us honked and got him going. The whole town was confusing to drive in. It is split east/west by the railroad tracks, and there are only two or three places to cross. Of course, it didn't help that we got our orientation off by 90 degrees and kept thinking we were going north/south instead. Our GPS was also confused and kept taking us in circles instead of having us turn left. We stayed in a hotel on the old Historic 66 side of town and almost followed it out of town going the wrong way on Sunday. What stopped us was a roadblock on the east side of a Day's Inn that was fully engulfed in flame, requiring us to turn around to get to the breakfast restaurant we were looking for. Once we were done with breakfast, we were mystified at why the GPS wanted us to take a different route out of town than we had started to take before turning it on. It took nearly ten miles before we realized we had almost made a costly mistake in direction earlier. Turned out the GPS, that we have nicknamed Big Mouth and refer to as 'she', was right after all. Go figure.

The only thing I really liked about Gallup, since the cultural center and museum seemed to be closed, were the corner decorations. They were giant Indian pots painted in colors and patterns I associate with Zuni culture, black and red (rust-red) on white. They were beautiful, about six or eight feet tall.

Headed home on Sunday, we looked across a panoramic view to what we thought was the northwest and saw a huge, monolithic sandstone ridge with a very large natural arch in it. We speculated it was the Window Rock that the town is named for. Window Rock, AZ is the capital of the Navajo Nation, and the first sign of civilization between here and Gallup. They have a Denny's! But no Walmart. Anyway, when we got to the town, we couldn't see the big ridge anymore, and the only arch we found couldn't have been the one we saw. Searching on the internet Sunday night we came to the conclusion that the big one was indeed Window Rock. So now we have a mystery to clear up, which I'm hoping to do next weekend. Our search also revealed a little-known natural bridge just 25 miles from here on the South Rim road, that I would also like to see and photograph.

Between here and Window Rock the road climbs from its starting point around 5500 feet in altitude to almost 8000 and passes from high desert plateau to even higher evergreen forest. It reminded me of the Flagstaff area, but I don't think it's as extensive. All along the way, residences are dotted over the landscape, some with modern-day hogans nearby, all facing east. Although I've always had a casual interest in the native cultures around the Four Corners area, living here among the Navajo has given me an incentive to learn more. Maybe that will be one of my projects while here. Thank goodness for the Internet!