Carl Henning

El Malpai National Monument includes five lava flows. El Malpai means The Badlands. The rough lava was abundant and a lot of it was aa (one of my favorite Scabble words and one of the 105 two-letter words in the current Official Scabble Players Dictionary).

No Chaco for me!

Chaco Canyon access roads were inaccessible from the south so we made other plans: a pueblo and two national monuments.

“Nothing” as in a hole… in a rock… or a window in a rock: Window Rock. Located in the national capital of the Navajo Nation of Window Rock on the Arizona side of the Arizona/New Mexico border.

Zane Grey was disappointed in the cabin he commissioned on the Mogollon Rim (pronounced muggy-own). He expected a log cabin, but got a New England style cottage because the builder figured he was an Easterner. (Ok, he was born in Ohio.)

I wonder about some of these road signs.

Fort Lancaster was fairly short-lived, opening before the Civil War, abandoned during, and re-manned as a sub-post of Fort Stockton. After the Civil War, it was manned by Buffalo Soldiers (black troops, white officers).

In Texas you can go from Easter Island to Stonehenge is just a few steps. The replica of England’s Stonehenge is dubbed Stonehenge II and it is not broken like the original. Of course, those aren’t real stones either – there plaster on wire mesh. Everyone asks how I find these memorable locations. OK, one person asked once. There’s an app for that!

San Antonio’s Witte Museum was an interesting diversion. Not pronounced WIT. Not pronounced WITTY. It’s WITT -E. There was a room stuffed with Texas animals. Right, the animals were stuffed, too.

The Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio is mostly about trains. We visited between shuttling Mark between baseball venues. One of those trips involved a pleasant conversation with a police officer.

Ok, not Mount Olympus, Olympic National Park. There were animals, waterfalls, gift shops, but no view from the top.