Neil & Barb's Travel Blog: Acoma

Day started cloudy with periods of sunshine, but very cool, almost cold. Wind picked up, with periods of rain. High 53F.

An interesting gas station remnant on our way out of Bernalillo.

An interesting vista as we broach the hillside on the way to Gallup, NM.

We took a side trip to the Acoma Sky City, a pueblo on top of a remote mesa.

The road made hairpin turns around 100 ft bluffs. Just past Dead Man’s curve we spotted this deer.

A pretty vista on the way to Sky City.

The Sky City Mesa, from afar.

On the Acoma reserve there are strict rules about photography, and there is no videography allowed. No images can be taken of tribe members, the cemetary or inside the mission,on pain of confiscation.
No sketches or paintings. There is a well-done visitor centre, and we took a guided tour of the pueblo.
Here are several views from the top of the mesa.

The homes on the mesa have been built and rebuilt many times. The mesa has been inhabited continuously since 600 AD. All descendants of a single grandmother would live in one home. Most tribe members now live in family homes closer to the highway; mesa homes are occupied daily by the clan chiefs, by others only on special occasions.

Originally these homes were mud and straw adobe, with eisenglass (translucent crystalline rock) windows. Some still are; most are now brick with adobe, with windows and doors from Home Depot.

The houses are grouped by clan (there are twelve; they are matrilineal. Each is generally two or three story, the higher stories reached by external ladder.

Several naturally occurring cisterns are used for watering animals.

Corn is sacred, and is often planted by the front door of Corn clan members.

A view over to the nearby Enchanted Mesa.

A view onto the plains below, traditionally planted in corn, squash.

The Sacred Tree, a cottonwood, the only tree on the mesa.

We then got back on Route 66 and headed to Gallup, with a brief stop at the New Mexico Mining Museum in Grant. (Sorry, no pictures.) On the way, we had some magnificent views of the Ambrosia [?] mountains, obscured by low clouds, with only the foothills exposed. Note how the cliffs look square slabs of rock:

Terry at the Continental Divide. Elf is keeping the getaway car running.

A good excuse for a market, nu?

We then had a pleasant run into Gallup along a lightly travelled section of the route. We stopped for the night at the El Rancho Hotel and Motel, famously frequented by Hollywood types in the day.