Wandering Orbit

Wednesday we drove to Albuquerque and stopped at a Mormon Battalion monument. Interesting to note that the original route was the middle of nowhere and is now right next to a major interstate We went to the Albuquerque Temple And then to Petroglyph National Monument You can find SO many petroglyphs all over the park, there are lots of hiking trails and it was amazing to hike past them Our last stop of the day was another Madonna of the Trail statue--we haven't found them all, yet! Thursday we headed south to the Very Large Array The array is well known for being in the movies! One of the more recent movies it appeared in was Contact , starring Jodie Foster There was a visitor center, with an amazing introductory film, narrated by Jodie Foster, plus various museum exhibits There was also a walking tour You could walk up to one of the dishes!   We also learned that they use these railroad tracks (that make a Y shape) to move the dishes from

Monday we saw plenty of wildlife, including TWO coyotes up close, sniffing around for jackrabbits in our campground   We also saw several herds of pronghorns We headed to Pecos National Historical Park which was partly archeological ruins from a mission and earlier ruins from a pueblo We even got to go inside a reconstructed kiva This was the fourth, and last, church built at the site, the first one which was much larger also stood on this site We went to Fort Union National Monument and had a moment of confusion. We had already visited a Fort Union NPS site... in North Dakota! It was Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site which was from an earlier time period (early 1800s) and was part of the fur trade. This site was on the Santa Fe trail and was also a Civil War outpost--even clear out in New Mexico! (Texas was trying to claim land)   These last two pictures do not do it justice, but you could see the wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail