Stormy weather, but Sadie liked it

Today was another travel day. We drove from Flagstaff, AZ to Gallup, NM, knowing virtually nothing about Gallup, except that it is about halfway between Flagstaff and Santa Fe, NM, which we really want to see.

It turns out that Gallup has its own charm. The architecture is really wonderful. I hope tomorrow it will be better weather for strolling the city. That brings me to the title of today's post. The weather was good and bad. It was good because we had a tail wind, but it was bad because we had some pretty exciting rain squalls, complete with lightning and thunder! The closer we got to Gallup, the worse the weather got.

It is our considered opinion that this is unusual weather for Gallup. First, the water doesn't seem to drain off the streets, suggesting that the streets are not designed to accommodate heavy rainfall. Second, Jill, who is a very curious soul, looked up statistics about Gallup on the internet. She learned that average rainfall in Gallup in May is 1/2"...for the whole month. I'm sure we got that much today!

Now, the other half of the title of this post refers to the fact that Sadie just purred all the way today. I attribute this fact to two things. First, the temperature was much cooler than Tuesday, when we came to Flagstaff from Kanab; about 20 degrees cooler, to be exact. Second, although we lost 2,000 feet of altitude as we drove from Flagstaff to Holbrook, AZ and gained back 1,400 feet between Holbrook and Gallup, the slopes were gentle and Sadie rarely had to work hard to make the grades. It seems the farther we drive, the better she runs. I think she has been needing exercise.

Along the way today, we saw some beautiful scenery, but then when have we not? Jill got a few pictures from the coach today, but the rain and the dark gray skies made for poor conditions for making photos. The slide show above includes one shot of the desert terrain, one of a big coal-fired power plant near Holbrook, a couple of the painted cliffs, outside of Gallup, and one of a remarkable monolith, also near Gallup.

Tomorrow, we hope to visit the Zuni pueblo, which is a living community, and, we are told, represents a little slice of American Indian life. The pueblo is home to an Indian community of artisans. But more about that tomorrow. For now, I will end by saying that today was different, but really satisfying.