Day 3: Grants NM - Cortez CO

I expect you are wondering about the non-appearance of this entry at the expected time. This is because the connection to the Intertubes went down at about ten o'clock Sunday night, just after I had uploaded the day's photos. I did try using my phone as a hotspot, but because its grasp of USAnian mobile networks is shakier than Shakin' Stevens with the DTs, that proved impractical. Not to mention expensive had it worked. Anyway, don't complain. If you are Miss von Brandenburg you would have had to wait a Several of days for a postcard and if you are not Miss von Brandenburg you wouldn't have had anything at all.  Anyway, I am now elsewhere, with Interwebs access, so as soon I've faffed about with photos, gone foraging for toothy comestibles, decided where I'm going tomorrow and booked a room for same and all the other tedious administrative bobbins that goes with being an Automatic Diarist, you can have Day 4 as well.

I do not know what it is about sitting inside Shiny Metal Birbs for half a day that can accurately reproduce the symptoms of a sprained ankle, but it did it to me AGAIN ouch hobble and hurty.  With this in mind let us have a nice unstressed day, right?  The first order of business was to vandalise my motor-car in the absence of feral Dutchmen to do the job themselves:

Sadly this afternoon's heavy rain means that I will probably have to do it all over again once it's had time to collect some more muck.

The second order of business was to visit Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument which, thanks to a Mr Danny Guthrie, I have now heard of.  Blat east on I-40, switch to I-25 at Albuquerque and north for a bit, then off into the countryside and join the tail of a very long queue.  The place operates a one-in one-out policy so unless you rock up at opening time you will have to wait.  They have - helpfully - put up boards along the access road telling you how long you can expect to roast under the broiling sun of New Mexico, but having come all this way I was in no mood to turn around and bog off, unlike some of my faithless companions of the line.  And I had my Kindle to hand to pass the time.  "Estocada", the third volume of Graham Hurley's "Wars Within" series, whether you're interested or not.

Tent Rocks is worth the wait.  There are two trail options, one of which involves a lot of walking uphill in broiling temperatures and one which offers the same, but in lesser quantities.  Mindful of my not-sprained ankle I opted for the latter, ycelpt the "Cave Trail" because there is a cave.  On it.  Just look at the pictures:

Tent Rocks.  How did they think up the name?

Ex-tree at Tent Rocks

Cave, New Mexico, Sunday

All this year's travel photos may be found here: clicky for daguerrotype Goodness

Next I tell Emily to take me to the southern end of NM-4, wot is a scenic route towards Los Alamos.  Natch she wanted to take me via Los Alamos, so I had to ignore her and take the sensible route there.  My fading-memory branes are suggesting that I actually went up here in 2005, but it was dark that time so lacked familiarity today.  And it rained, bigly.  Eventually you got to Los Alamos aka "The Hill" wot hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  It was basically put there to invent atomic weapons in, and much of it still is, so if you turn left at the bottom of the hill instead of right to the town itself, you have to go through a checkpoint where a scrupulously polite but heavily armed fellow checks your ID to ensure that you are not a North Korean spy.

OK, Emily, take me to Cortez!  Looking at ye actual paper mappe would suggest the sensible route would be west to US-550 then northwest on that to Bloomfield and Durango, but we didn't do that at all, which suggests that I should have turned off NM-4 somewhere up the Jemez Valley and not gone all the way to Los Alamos.  Whatever the cause, I am not displeased, because US-550 appears to go straight across them Scorching Plains™ of New Mexico instead of sneaking into the southern end of the Colorado Rockies at Pagosa Springs.  The only snag was the 250 miles, which meant arriving in Cortez after:

• dark, and
• thirty miles behind a pair of very loud Harley-Fergusons

My ankle does not hurt any more though, which is confusing because I keep expecting it to and limp even when it is uncalled for.