petroglyph national monument

Our final stop was Petroglyph National Monument, which is actually in Albuquerque. We didn't have time for much, so we settled on a place called Rinconada Canyon, where it was suggested that we would see up to 500 petroglyphs.

Here's what the terrain looked like:


The dark volcanic rocks were perfect for spotting petroglyphs on them, as you'll see in a moment.

It was hot and dry out there, as you might expect, and although we got there right when the park opened at 8am, we were still able to see a bit of wildlife, including rabbits, hawks, quail and lizards.





In the beginning, the petroglyphs were few and far between. They became more plentiful the further back in the canyon we walked.



































Seeing all this stuff out in the open was really cool. It almost became a treasure hunt, searching for them, pointing them out to each other, trying to figure out what the glyphs might have represented. Was this Indian graffiti? Did it serve some larger purpose? Or was it just something to do? I have no idea, but it's interesting to see.

We spent a couple hours in the canyon, and then it was time to head to the airport and go our separate ways. I'm really glad that my dad came along for the fun. It was nice to have someone to talk to and hang out with, and we haven't spent that much time together since...well...maybe we've never spent that much time together, so it was good bonding time.

I got upgraded to first class, so the flight home was no big deal. Bad luck had struck again when I got home, however. My desktop computer died. I tried various suggestions I found online, including taking a few components out and putting them back in and that sort of thing. Nothing worked, so I was out a computer and needed to get a new one. I decided to wait, however, as I was leaving for the UK on Saturday night.

I had to reverse that decision on Friday, however. My new iPad slipped off the bathroom counter and the screen shattered. Fortunately, the nice people at the Apple store replaced it even though they didn't have to, so I now needed a new computer to load all my content onto it. So, I went over to BBY and picked up a large laptop to replace the desktop. I thought things were going pretty well with that, but it wouldn't boot the following morning. After trying several different things, I got it to boot, and then was able to transfer all my content over. Since the major problem was that it wouldn't boot with my external hard drives plugged in, I decided it needed to be returned. So, I cleaned all my data off the hard drive and returned it. Major bummer, and several hours of time that I didn't really have were wasted.