Heits on the Road: El Morro on the way to Everywhere

Our first stop heading east was Gallup, New Mexico. As you probably know, Gallup is on the old mother road, Route 66. The town is a little rough around the edges, having seen better days. But the area surrounding it is chocked full of great site seeing. Within a few hours drive, is The Petrified Forest, The Painted Desert, Window Rock, Hubbell Trading Post, El Malpais National Monument, El Morro National Monument, Acoma Puebla, Aztec Crater, Bandera Crater, Canyon de Chilly, Chaco Canyon, Four Corners, Hovenweep, Mesa Valley, Monument Valley and Zuni Mission. Amazing for a place in the middle of nowhere.

We drove downtown and stopped for a late lunch at the El Rancho Hotel. A terrific old spot on Route 66 that has a great movie history. D.W. Griffiths's brother opened the hotel in the 1930's. Because of the location, many Western movies started being filmed in the area. And with it came the stars: Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Lucy & Ricki, Rosalind Russell, John Wayne, Jill St. John, Burt Lancaster, Alan Ladd, W.C. Fields, Doris Day, Spencer Tracey, Jack Benny, Lee Marvin, Jane Russell, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, John Garfield, Robert Taylor, Mae West, Ray Millan, Ralph Bellamy, Robert Mitchum, and Rock Hudson and the list of hotel guests just went on and on. The photos were priceless.

The next day, it was off to El Morro National Monument. About an hour and fifteen minutes away was the entrance to a truly monumental place. El Morro National Monument has been the stopping place for travelers for literally 2,000 years. Pre-historic man, ancestral Indians, Spanish explorers, American settlers, and the U.S. Army Camel Corps. All of them stopped to rest and refresh at the spring at the base of El Morro Mountain. While they stopped, they left inscriptions on the rock. Pictographs, petroglyphs, Spanish inscriptions, thoughts of settlers, and history, history, history.

The hike around the mountain started easy but ended up being pretty extreme. We didn't make it all the way to the top, but we gave it a good try. The scenery was worth the hike.