Travel Adventures in Arizona and New Mexico, Part 12: Gallup to Grants

This is my twelfth post about our adventures traveling through Arizona and New Mexico. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh posts before this one. Because I blog about educational travel, I received complimentary passes, media rates, and other benefits for several of the places we visited throughout the trip. Some of the attractions we toured are free to everyone; we paid full price for the rest. What I paid or didn't pay has no bearing on my reviews. Everything that I share is something I recommend without hesitation.

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Travel Adventures from Gallup to Grants

 

We started our adventures on Friday, April 17 in downtown Gallup, New Mexico. 

I have to say, Gallup has done an outstanding job with their branding. 

  

Everywhere you look, it's obvious that you are on Route 66. I love it. 

Nicknamed the "Gateway to Native America," Gallup really celebrates the art and traditions of its native people. This is one of several large pots around town painted by Zuni Pueblo artists. 

This is the Gallup Cultural Center, home of the Storyteller Museum. 

It features two main galleries, one of which is all about the Navajo Code Talkers. I'll get to that in a minute. 

  

We started in the other gallery, which focuses on the arts and culture of the Native people. There are also exhibits about the history of Gallup and Route 66. 

  

This was one of my favorite exhibits in the whole museum. It shows the huge variety of natural dyes found in the area. 

I love the way they're arranged around the woven rug in progress. 

  

  

This sand painting, located on the floor, is about 6 feet across. 

I loved seeing all of the colors and where they came from. 

On to the Navajo Code Talkers exhibit!

I learned that many of the Code Talkers were recruited as high schoolers, sent to eight weeks of Boot Camp, and THEN told why they were there and what they were expected to do. 

The Navajo code initially had 211 words assigned military meanings, plus one word for each letter of the English language so they could spell words that weren't included in the other 211. Letter D was deer, for example, as depicted in the painting in the lower right. The mural at the top of this photo has all 26 letter symbols hidden in it. I wish it were displayed lower so that I could have found them all (and gotten a better photo) but it was way above my head. 

I loved learning more about the Navajo Code Talkers and about the code itself. 

I definitely recommend a visit to the Gallup Cultural Center and specifically this exhibit. Bonus: it's free!

We left Gallup and continued east, crossing the Continental Divide. We stopped in the town of Grants. Of course, we had to go to the Route 66 Drive-Thru Arch! I wish we'd been there at night to see it in all its neon glory. 

Along this section of Route 66, you'll find six repurposed satellite dishes decorated with Native basket designs. They're really cool. 

The artwork is steps away from the New Mexico Mining Museum. We found a quick geocache amongst the outdoor exhibits then went inside to check out the rest of the museum. 

Grants was a significant location for uranium mining from the 1950s until the late 1990s. In fact, Grants was known as the Uranium Capital of the World and is considered a yellowcake boomtown. 

Yellowcake. 

We had a delicious buffet lunch at Pizza 9... 

... and then went a few miles down the road to El Malpais National Monument. The landscape of El Malpais was created by five major lava flows. The most recent was approximately 3000-4000 years ago, recent enough to be in the oral history of the local Native tribes. 

The Visitor Center has a beautiful indoor viewing area. 

There's also a great outdoor viewing and seating area. 

Both are nice, but I recommend hiking if you're at all able. 

I'm happy report that we no run-ins with either munitions or rattlesnakes at El Malpais. 

We only visited a fraction of El Malpais National Monument. If we'd had more time, we would have loved to drive deeper into the park and experience more of what it has to offer. But we had another destination to reach, so it was time to move on. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.