Sad to say, but i was not convinced there was more to see of the city. Chances were good that the Petroglyph National Monument would be another casualty of the government shutdown and so was not worth considering as by this time i was 3-for-3 in terms of national parks being closed even though their respective websites did not definitively say that. There are 15 such places in NM.
At the History Museum of NM i learned that ABQ had a railroad yard and when i looked it up, the abandoned buildings hosted an informal market on the weekends. It was parked up when when i got there and i found auxiliary parking nearby. As i walked to the vast building, a “breaking bad” touring RV passed by and you heard muffled talking so it must have been a locale. I only got through season 2…
I bought some local empanadas and delicious watermelon agua fresca and continued the venture south.
So why not follow the Rio Grande where you could? From what i had seen of it at this point it was still pretty, umm, un-grande but was part of a fantastic gorge near Taos. I was close to its headwaters in CO, but needless to say it is tucked away further than i had time to go.
The big highway south was exactly that – a big highway and so i took it south far enough where it had an offshoot that was probably the original road that Highway 25 replaced. There were a few wee towns along it, so i made it a Sunday drive just like any other Sunday drive passing through wee towns.
I was intrigued by a placename on my google maps called ‘isleto pueblo proper’ and so pointed the car in that direction. Upon arriving there was a big sign welcoming you to the isleta pueblo and 3 reminders for visitors: No photographs, sketching, or painting of people engaged in tribal activities. Oh, and to keep the speed down to 10mph to help keep the dust down.
I drove into the pueblo (under 10mph) to check it out and when i did the GPS referred to trails, as in “turn left on trail 36, and then left on trail 42.” The trails were really all very, very short and more conducive to walking than driving.
The church i saw in the middle of the pueblo was in session and so it was off limits. Driving around the pueblo i let the place be; and similar to the morada in Abiquiu, i did not want to be that person poking around with a cam. That said, i would love to learn more about the pueblos of New Mexico. They were considered as something different than other native american tribes and allowed to remain intact when the other nomadic tribes were being pushed into reservations. And perhaps that was the distinguishing characteristic – nomadic vs established communities with a set place and dwellings? Guess i have more pueblo “life homework” ahead of me…
The Rio Grande was more of an idea than a roadside companion because you could not exactly see it though it was very close by. Traveling further south was pretty uneventful and i made it to my intended destination of Sorocco when i saw a sign that said, “VLA, this way”. The sign’s siren’s song worked and i went another 52 miles to see the VLA (Very Large Array, btw) and would catch Sorroco on the way back.
The drive to the VLA went up in elevation to 6,900 feet and the land flattened out. Unbeknownst to me, the VLA and its 27 radio antennae sit in the floor of what was a prehistoric lake and was rimmed by mountains that used to be its shoreline. There was a visitor center that had a 24-minute film and a walking tour around part of the antennae field. You were asked to either turn off your cell phone entirely or just the WIFI and bluetooth because the stray radio frequency thrown off by them could disturb the collection of info by the antennae. You were watched as you did that.
The site has 27 90-foot antennae on railroad tracks that allow them to move in 3 different configurations for small, medium, and large imaging. The on-site supercomputer (!) allows the info from 27 collection antennae to be merged into a single “image”. The radius for the roaming antennae is 17 miles wide and the dish of an antenna is two school buses wide.
The big one in the pic above actually moved while i was there and was remarkably quiet not to mention agile. It did not poke around at 3mm per second and instead reminded me of the Pixar lamp, Luxo.
The trip back to Socorro was supplanted by an ad hoc decision to have dinner at a place in the middle of nowhere known as the Gateway to Ancient Cities. I did not have time for further exploration since i was going to arrive at 6pm and had another hour to get back to ABQ. All i wanted was a simple dinner at a place that had signs on the road.
Even though there was no government shutdown here, the place was closed even though it said it was open. Why should my track record remain unbroken? I have a feeling the best the adjacent cafe could offer (and they were hiring, btw) was a corndog, so it was just as well.
(This was directly across the street from it)
Time was not on my side and i headed back into the bosom of ABQ hungry as heck where i found a vietnamese restaurant that was overrun with fiesta folks. Four cars entered the parking lot the same time as i did and we played “parking vultures” as other cars left.
Adequately fed, my day had ended.
The Big World 