Two weekends ago was supposed to be about watching balloons flying among red rocks, but the weather decided to change that.

The 24th Red Rock Rally in Gallup was scheduled to occur at the same time slot it has held each year since the event kicked off- during the first weekend in December. By and large, weather has historically cooperated for the event at that time. I figured it would again this year.

Friday, December 1st

I decided in early November to go ahead and take in the Rally for a second time, so beginning on the Monday before it, I watched the weather, and on Thursday, a day before the first mass ascension was scheduled, a front decide to move across western New Mexico, and Gallup was dusted with snow. I reviewed weather forecasts for the remaining weekend days, and they suggested Friday would be cold and wet, but that Saturday and Sunday conditions would improve. I decided to continue with my planned visit, and after work on Friday I drove west into sunny skies and mostly clear landscapes, which remained that way until I hit Thoreau at dusk. Once I crossed the Continental Divide, though, there was snow on the ground all around and moody clouds in the sky. Well, my course was set, and we’d see what we’d see. The snow on the ground remained all the way into Gallup.

Once I found my hotel and got checked in and my stuff put in my room, I wandered back out into the cold night to get some dinner, because I had read about the place and I figured it would be worth it. And I wasn’t wrong.

Dinner at Jerry’s

At the east end of downtown on Old 66, Jerry’s Cafe is a small Mexican restaurant fronted with a colorful and welcoming sign. Inside, the diner is small, a hall with double-wide booths stacked on the left and the right, and an island of two single-wide booths separated by glass running up the middle. The kitchen is at the back of the hall. A hostess greets you at the entrance, and several young servers and a busser circle the island, visiting tables.

I had read several sites that said for the uninitiated, get Miguel’s Delight for your meal, so I did. A chile relleno, a chicken enchilada, a beef taco, beans and rice. And I left the restaurant stuffed and happy.

I was optimistic about the next morning, and perhaps a little excited. After an errand, I returned to the hotel and got my gear ready for the morning, and then set my phone’s alarm for 5:20, and then went to bed early. I had a dawn patrol to watch in the morning.

Saturday, December 2nd

Red Rock Rally

I was up before my phone alarm went off in the morning, and I dressed and packed my camera gear for being out on a cold field. I scraped a thin dry layer of snow and some frost from my truck’s windows and I warmed it up before I headed east into the dark to Red Rock Park. A thin blanket of white covered the roads after a short early morning snow. Fortunately, the park was 3 miles from my lodgings. And, as I expected, I was one of the first visitors not staying at the park to arrive at the park. After a short adventure to find where visitors were supposed to park, I pulled into a giant back lot and settled next to two other cars who were ahead of me and resting near the lot exit. I got myself and my gear together, locked up the truck, and as dawn was lightening the blue in the east, I walked across another lot and up a short road to the launch field.

I ended up taking a walk across the empty launch field as the sun made its way to the horizon, finding my way to the trail head for visiting Church Rock. I walked up the trail a little and watched sunlight slowly climb down the formation, keeping an eye on activity in the launch field behind me. After taking a few photos of the rock in new light, I returned to the launch field- in time to hear the flight director announce to the awaiting pilots and crews that the winds were not optimal for flight, and despite the clear blue skies above, Saturday’s launch was a scratch.

It happens. And in my mind, I think I kind of expected it, a day removed from a decent snow. But there’s always tomorrow, I thought, which had a better weather forecast for the area on my phone.

I wandered back to my truck, only to realize that my optimized parking strategy had actually put me in an eddy near the exit that required me to back into a sluice of tight traffic to escape it, which itself was merging with three other streams vying for right of way to the exit. My escape from Red Rock Park would not be hasty.

We live and learn.

I was a little concerned, though, because I had signed up for a 10:30 AM Middle Village tour- with an educational talk about their culture and then a drive through the old pueblo itself- later that morning in Zuni, NM, which was about 40 miles south of Gallup, and I didn’t know how good or bad the roads were, and by the time I arrived back at the hotel, it was pushing 9. I hastily acquired a courtesy omelette and some juice from the hotel breakfast bar, and then it was off to Zuni.

Zuni Pueblo

Well, the it turned out to be beautiful morning for a drive, as everywhere off the roads was dressed out in white, while most of the roads themselves were dry or a little wet under the strong sun and a clear blue sky.

I arrived in Zuni around 10 and made my way to the visitors center, where I met one of the tourism officials who let me use the facility’s rest room. After, we talked for a few minutes, and aside from being with the tourism center, he promoted businesses in Zuni, and invited me to attend a small business fair in the town’s wellness center nearby. I told Mario I would come and visit the show if he would give me a high-five when I showed up. He chuckled but agreed to, and then he and his wife left for the fair, and I remained in the center reading literature, awaiting the tour.

At 10:30, I was joined by two couples and another tour guide named Sean, and our main tour guide, whom I was glad to meet and learn from.

I had read about Kenny not only on a vacation rating site where a few people cheered him for his tours, but also in posts on Facebook and on the New Mexico Nomad website.

Kenny Bowekaty is a unique teacher on his people and their culture. He is Zuni, and a religious leader among his people, but his lifelong curiosity has also made him thoroughly knowledgeable about Zuni culture and cosmology. As a student of his people, he kind of fell into archeology. He knew locales and stories about the places and events that had existed or occurred around his pueblo, and as he collected cultural information, in time that knowledge somehow brought Stanford University to him- and also inevitably took him to Stanford to study archeology.

After attending Stanford, he came back to the place of his people, and among other interests, helped fire up some tourism events to help educate visitors about the pueblo’s people, and its past. Not surprisingly, he is today the main guide for the Zuni Tourism Center, providing tours to various places of significance in the pueblo’s history. He is knowledgable, affable, modest and engaging.

Today, he was taking us to visit the heart of Zuni life, which emanates from the center of the old pueblo in the center of town- the Middle Place. But before our visit to the Middle Place, he carried us through an hour-long presentation on Zuni culture and how his people ended up where they were, touching on a basic cosmology of things from their religious perspective. His presentation was clear and well-delineated, and it was perhaps the best souvenir I brought home from this trip. Notes on Zuni culture, from Kenny.

After his presentation, we all loaded into a van for a quick slow roll through the Middle Place (which took all of 10 minutes beyond the 5-minute stop we made by the old Zuni Mission for some of us to take some pictures of the old building- the two of us who had bought $5 photo permits).

Despite the brevity of the drive, I appreciated seeing another example of pueblo life in New Mexico, and was struck by the uniformity in building style of the homes on this mound of history. Each home, in its present iteration, was a small one-story structure, with most walled by walls made of large gray-brown bricks. Kenny and Sean had participated in an archeological dig through the floor of one of these very pueblo homes, and it took them down through nine other versions of residential layers that the top one had been built upon.

The Middle Place is old. This pueblo has been continually occupied since the 1300s, if not longer, as the people have been in this region for several millenia.

After returning to the visitor center and wrapping up the tour, thanks and goodbyes were said, and suddenly alone again, I decided I had best make it to that business fair.

I found the Wellness Center, and entering, I found Mario and got my cheerful high five, and then I took a walk around the perimeter tables of the vendors. 75% of the community members make a living from arts or crafts of some form, so it was not surprising for me to see jewelry and weavings and cloths at most of these tables. And I was glad to see a third of the vendors were young men and women. At many of the remaining non-arts tables were food items- cookies, burritos, breads, brownies. And yeah, I bought some of those.

After completing my round around the hall meeting some nice people and seeing some lovely products, I took my small cache of loot and headed out, and in my truck I wandered a little on some pueblo backroads, looking for a good vantage point on their cherished mesa, Corn Mountain, for a photo op. As with in other turbulent times, after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, the Zuni retreated onto the top of this mesa to live defensively for the next 12 years. When the Spanish returned to New Mexico, the Zuni returned back to their pueblo, and back into a respectful relationship with the returning Europeans.

After my exploratory drive, it was nearing 2:30 PM, and I decided it was about time to head back to Gallup. My plan was to eat an early dinner and then retreat to my lodging for some rest and prep for the following morning’s launch activities. As I was heading out of Zuni, though, I couldn’t resist a stop to walk a little around the Zuni Veterans Memorial sitting under Corn Mountain. And then it was back to Gallup.

Dinner at the Ranch

For dinner, I had decided I needed to make a stop at El Rancho Hotel. El Rancho is famous as the place where movie stars in the last mid-century stayed while traversing or filming in Western New Mexico, and the several times I have driven by the hotel complex on Old 66, it has alwayshad a full parking lot. Well, the hotel has a restaurant of some local repute, so by eating at the hotel restaurant, I could wander the hotel itself a bit to process some celebrity history.

For dinner, despite the place featuring New Mexican fare, I went crazy and got a John Wayne Burger and a soda. It seemed appropriate, with John Wayne images throughout the hotel greeting me. And it was good enough- a thick Angus patty with the normal fixings and some guacamole. I was satisfied after I completed the meal.

After dinner, I looked at photos in the hotel lobby until I chanced a glance out of an upstairs window and realized golden hour light was blazing on the hills north of the hotel.

I went outside and thought how much I wanted a drone photo of I-40 running east through town with those burning hills in the background, and I tried to launch my drone in a nearby parking lot until its GPS sensors told me it could not fly- we were in an airport zone. Dagnappit! Ack.

Oh well. I watched the sunset sky from the hotel parking lot, and once it started fading, I realized I was weary and I hopped in the truck and headed back down the road west to my hotel, where I cleaned up a little and then basically hopped in bed for the night, watched the UNM Lobos hoops dudes destroy the NMSU Aggies streaming on my phone, and, once the gamer was done, set my alarm (less) early for the AM and went on to sleep.

Sunday, December 3rd

When I got up around 6:30, I checked the Red Rock Rally wall on Facebook, and to my (sort of) surprise, for the third day in a row, the mass ascension was cancelled. I felt a little bummed for myself, but a little more bummed for the pilots who came to town to participate in the Rally. After dressing, I went down to the hotel lobby which was already full of several pilots and crew members grabbing a bite before heading out of town early, and while I ordered an omelet from the young woman cooking eggs, I decided to use the day in a good way before heading back to Albuquerque.

Road Trip to Chinle

Since the day was very young, I opted to use it to drive to Canyon de Chelly, which is about 100 miles northwest of Gallup, where I could take some pictures of giant gaps in the earth sprinkled with snow. After loading up and gassing up the truck, I set out west on AZ-264 to Ganado and Burnside, and then went north on US-191 to Chinle.

Past Ganado, there was a ridgeline covered with snow to the southwest, and then on down the road, past Burnside, the earth was wide and bare, and in both instances, I thought it was good to stop and take some drone shots of the land, as I love a good aerial view of unique spaces.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument

I arrived at Chinle about 11 AM and made a stop at the Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center to ask which of the two main roads in the monument would have better light for some photos, and the friendly young ranger directed me to the North Rim route, with its three overlooks along the Canyon del Muerto. The sky was clear and blue, and the monument was sparsely visited on a coldish winter day, so I felt like I had the place mostly to myself.

I took my time wandering about the rocks, enjoying the myriad of views available, at the the Antelope House Overlook, and took many photos of the beautiful location.

I then toodled on to the Mummy Cave Overlook, and then the Massacre Cave Overlook, both of which were a bit more restrictive in what you could see from their positions on the canyon rim.

But that did not mean the views weren’t amazing and beautiful.

I was at Chelly until 2 PM, a time which I had set as when I needed to leave so I could drive most of my trip home in daylight. The three hours I spent at Chelly timed out just right for the day’s main adventure. It was time to head home.

Indian Route 12

My route home to Albuquerque would again require that I drive east from Window Rock and Gallup, but heading up the North Rim Drive of Canyon de Chelly meant that my alternative route back to Window Rock would not require a trip back through Chinle and Ganado. The North Rim Drive, Indian Route 64, would branch at the small town of Tsaile, and Indian Route 12 would roll east from there, over a low pass, and then south, west of the Chuska Mountains and the Arizona-New Mexico state line, through a number of small Navajo communities, and past a number of scenic range and red rock areas. Indian Route 12 is scenic at any time of the year, but as a backdrop for my push to return to Gallup and New Mexico, snow covered valleys and rock formations made the route especially pretty to take.

Perhaps my greatest surprise of this drive was rounding southeast across a slip of the Chuskas Mountains and coming over a snowy forested hill to have a body of water- and 4 wild horses grazing on whatever they found in the blanket of snow- greet me immediately. The water before me was Wheatfields Lake, a popular camping and fishing destination on the Navajo Nation, where two people in a boat and a line of men on the shore were not deterred by conditions or temperature from fishing.

The remaining drive south on Indian Route 12 into Window Rock, which winds back and forth over the AZ-NM state line, was made across a snow-covered plains, and then by rises of red rocks under a warm sun in a deep blue sky. I passed by the turnoff to Sheep Springs in Crystal, and then the north access road to Todilto Park (see Navajo Needles), and I realized I was back on a familiar route. Walls of red formations east of the road pulled me forward into and through the town of Navajo, and on in to Window Rock.

After grabbing a few tacos for an early dinner at the Taco Bell there, it was time to head east on 264 and get back on I-40 to get home.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon behind me, I enjoyed golden hour along the familiar route between Gallup and Bluewater, marveling at the snow on top of Mt. Taylor as I neared it. When the sun was extinguished for the evening, I made a last fuel stop in sleepy Grants and then finished my drive home, arriving with a few hours left before bed time to unload the truck and unwind.

While the Red Rock Rally would have undoubtedly been the highlight event of this trip if balloons had flown, my visit to Zuni took first prize. The tour was so informative, and then meeting a number of kind locals at the tourism center and at the arts fair won me over to that place. It was also just good to get out, and to see a little of that region enhanced by touches of winter white. Canyon de Chelly will always be a favorite destination for me, as it is such a premire example of desert beauty.

I’ll have to think about whether or not I try again to attend another Red Rock Rally.

I suspect, after some time, I will be primed to try and take it in again.