Albuquerque and Bandelier Monument

Bandelier National Monument is 48 miles NW of Sante Fe NM.It`s roughly 34,000 acres has only 3 miles of road but 70 miles of trails.

Ancestral Pueblo people in and around Bandelier were farmers who grew maize,beans and squash.Archeological surveys show at least 3,000 sites in Bandelier,but not all were inhabited at the same time.

Long house is an 800-foot stretch of adjoining,multi-storied stone homes with hand carved caves as back rooms.Stone homes once stood in front of many of these caves.

Petroglyphs  can be seen on many of the walls and caves.

Albuquerque NM.

Made it !!.
Left my house in Ft.Lauderdale at 5 am Saturday morning and pulled into Albuquerque NM at about 7 pm Sunday evening.A little over 2000 miles in about 40 hours.
I didn`t take any pictures from Florida all the way over to New Mexico,mainly because there isn`t a whole lot to see on I-40 West.
However crossing over the Texas /New Mexico state line at about 7pm,the sunset was just stunning.From the state line to Albuquerque is about 260 or so miles,and all the way there I was treated to the most beautifull colors in the sky,vivid blues and oranges that lasted the whole way there.

On the way through Texas on I-40,where everything is bigger including the storms,I drove through the mother of all hail storms,seriously !!.
What started out as a pretty regular looking rain storm :

..started to morph into this......

...and by the time I realised that I was screwed and had nowhere to go but forward it had turned into a seriously pissed off full throttle marble sized hailstorm.

On the eastbound side there was a pile up,peoples windshields were cracking,my whole body was getting pelted,I have a few bruises on my legs from it(really!!).

All I could do was try to punch through it,which I did about 10 miles down.

I arrived at my host Terris house,exhausted,battered by Texas,and hardly able to kep my eyes open,but very happy to have made it in one piece.