10:57 a.m.
Visitor Center

From Gallup we headed south on Highway 602 and then east on Highway 53 to El Moro National Monument. We parked outside of the small Visitor Center. It was 75 degrees. Surprisingly, there were a lot of cars in the lot. Perhaps it is more popular than we thought.

The Monument is in a nice setting of pinyon and juniper, with lots of colored sandstone formations on the tall, cathedral-like cliffs surrounding it.

Inside the Visitor Center we bought our annual park pass for $80. The Ranger that sold us the pass looked familiar. Then I remembered that we had spoken with him on our trip to the Flagstaff, Arizona area a couple of October's back. At that time he was working in the NPS Regional Visitor’s Center there. He had given us good information on the several parks and monuments in that area. He says that he i’s now where he’s always wanted to be, and seemed very happy.

Inscription Rock Trail

We changed into our walking shoes and headed out to see the sights. Most of the Inscription Loop Trail is paved and mostly level. The trail passes along the base of the cliff where there are hundreds of signatures dating all the way back to the late 1600s and on up to about 1906. There are also petroglyphs and pictographs scattered across the light colored sandstone face. We saw the perennial pool of water that was the main attraction that brought all of these historic characters to this location, where so many felt obliged to leave their signatures for posterity.

It was a very pleasant walk, and well worth the time to stroll along and wonder at what all of those characters left behind, and who they might have been, and how their lives went after their visit here. At the junction where the trail to the Mesa top veers off from the paved trail back to the Visitor Center we spotted a bull snake crossing the path. It was moving very slow, but determined to move off into the scrub. It was a nice looking critter.

Mesa Top Trail

From there we continued on past a few more inscriptions, then made the 600 foot climb up to the top. The trail is asphalt until it reaches the top and crosses a natural sandstone surface. There are cairns to mark the way in many places. From up on top there are great views of the surrounding area, and the local rock formations are very colorful. There is also the ruins of the Atsina Pueblo, near the point where the trail begins is drop back to the desert below. The pueblo is partially excavated and interesting, with one of the few square kivas that we've seen; a Mogollon trait.

From the ruins there is a short, steep descent back to the base of the cliffs and the Visitor Center.

1:24 p.m.
Picnic Area

We walked back through the Visitor Center and asked one of the rangers about the obviously sanded areas around the some of the inscriptions. She told us that the Monument came into existence in 1906, but it did not have a ranger until 1920. So when the ranger got here he found that more inscriptions had been added. He took it upon himself to erase all inscriptions that had been added after 1906.

After that we stopped in the picnic area and ate some lunch. There was a large group of Zuni Indians there in the group picnic site, and they seemed to spill out into all of the other picnic tables as well.

2:11 p.m.
Campground

As we left El Moro it was 87 degrees and partly cloudy, with some rain clouds showing up here and there. On the way out we stopped in the campground. It costs $5.00 per night. There is water. Each site has a fire pit, picnic table, and a pad for a tent. There are vault toilets. The campground sits among the tall pinyons, so there is some shade, but it would still be petty hot in the summer months.