Route 66 Day 26 Nov 3, 2019



My third day in Albuquerque was spent at the Petroglyphs National Monument.  They have three areas to hike.  The first one has 3 small hiking trails.  The other two each have a hiking trail that is 2 miles or less.  I started out at the section that has three short hiking ttrails.  I had asked the park ranger about stairs or elevation and he had assured me that the trails were all easy even with a wonky knee.  I pull up to the first trail and its basically a 45 degree 100 yard trail up to the top of hill.  Like this:
And for those of you wondering, that 45 degree angle at the beginning of the the mountain, yeah, that's a trail....full of rocky stairs and uneven ground and lots of elevation.

But I did it anyway after I did the other two trails and I took a bazillion photos.  The park is beautiful.  There are thousands of petroglyphs in the park and its amazing they've lasted.  There is also some graffiti and damage by modern idiots but luckily not that much.  After this sight, I moved onto a second site,  The trail there was fairly easy and again lots of petroglyphs to photograph.  Oddly, about halfway through I realized I was way more interesting in getting photos of the rocky squirrels, fence lizards and the unknown birds than I was the petroglyphs.  After taking a few hundred shots of similar images on different rocks, it kind of losses its appeal.  The park closes at 4:30pm and it was getting close to 4pm, so I decided to leave the 3rd site until later.  Or maybe leave it all together.  I hated to admit it, but I'd had my fill of petroglyphs.  There are amazing and they need to be preserved, but I didn't see any more.  









It was still fairly early, so I thought about going to the library, but most of them close at 5 or 6pm.  I'd barely had enough time to get comfortable before I'd have to leave.  So I sat in the Walmart parking lot and worked on my fully charged computer until I ran out of juice.  I still wasn't caught up.  But I made good progress.
I decided I would do the BioPark the next day.  The combo pass gave you access to the zoo, aquarium, botanical park and the train.  The zoo was roughly two miles away from the other two and the train would take you there.  It was a good deal.  Slept in the Walmart parking lot and slept good.

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