"And show us where there's water... cool, clear water."

Our first stop of the day was El Morro National Monument, which turned out to be a gem. There is a beautiful sandstone promontory with a permanent pool of water at the base that has been used by Indians, Spaniards, and Americans, as they passed through the area. Along the base of the promontory are petroglyphs and carvings left by all three groups.

An amusing one (picture to come later for technical reasons) translates:

Here was the General Don Diego de Vargas, who conquered for our Holy Faith, and for the Royal Crown, all of New Mexico at his own expense, year of 1692.






The trail continued up to the top of the bluff and along the edge of an interesting box canyon.



The park service had pecked out the trail, creating the faint parallel marks on the sandstone.



They had also carved stairs straight out of the stone, to make things easy for us.



This pueblo, situated on the plateau above the water hole, dates from about 1275 and had over 800 rooms, although only a handful were excavated.



Later on we visited El Malpais National Monument, which conserves an area of lava flows and lava tube caves, one of which I am heading into here. It was remarkably cold in the caves, near freezing, despite the relatively warm weather.



At this point in the cave there was absolutely no light, so we set the camera to an 8 second exposure, and I am waving the spotlight around randomly.

Click me to see where we went. That splotch that looks like an ink spill near the second marker is a lava flow. Did I mention that lava is cool?