Summer Travels: Part 1

When I last posted, we were at Tetilla Peak Recreation Area, a really nice, quiet, Corps of Engineer park on Cochiti Lake near Santa Fe.

Cochiti Lake

Nice, big spaces

New Mexico sunset

We left Tetilla Peak and headed west with plans to stop at Bluewater State Park in western New Mexico. Bluewater was full so we ended up staying at Red Rocks park near Gallup. That ended up being a great find. It's a beautiful park on Indian reservation land near Church Rock. Lots of prairie dogs.

Prairie dogs

Storm coming at Red Rock Park

Church Rock

The park has a natural amphitheater, a convention center and a really nice Indian Museum. They hold a lot of events there like rodeos, the Inter-tribal Ceremonial and a balloon rally. We made reservations for the balloon rally this December.

Navajo rugs at the Indian Museum

The park is not far from Gallup and there is a lot to see and do in town. In the summer they have Native American dancers and musicians every evening downtown. We went one evening and it was really great-probably one of my favorite things we did all summer. We also stopped at the El Rancho hotel on Route 66 and checked out all the autographed photos of the stars that have stayed there over the years. The El Rancho use to be a Hollywood get-away in its heyday plus a lot of movies were filmed in the area so it is where the stars stayed during filming. We couldn't believe all the stars in the portrait gallery-Howard Hughes, Errol Flynn, Mae West, Henry Fonda, Humphry Bogart and many more. 

Welcome to Gallup!

Well, that's it for part one of our summer. Stay tuned for part 2: Arizona and Colorado. I'll end with one last picture from outside of Gallup. This is Pyramid Rock which can be seen in Grapes of Wrath. Thanks for visiting!