A Southwestern USA Expedition: Zuni and El Morro

There's no question that Route 66 is the iconic highway of the American Southwest, but it's more of a nostalgia trip than a true driving adventure. In my opinion, most people bypass the current king of the roads in the region when they stick to I40 between Albuquerque and Arizona. Route 53 in New Mexico, also known as the Ancient Way, proved to be one of the most interesting eighty mile stretches of road we've driven anywhere in the country.

I was excited about staying at Zuni because it would be the kids' first experience with a Native American reservation and I really wanted them to learn about the culture. Zuni belongs to a group of tribes called the Pueblo, so named by the Spanish due to their distinctive style of multi-family dwellings. In modern parlance the word pueblo now refers to ancient native buildings constructed from earth and stone as well as the modern towns in which the members live. There are nineteen different pueblos in New Mexico with various degrees of openness to visitors. The true name of the Zuni tribe is A’shiwi but they were misnamed by Spanish colonizers who had a poor understanding of their language. As is common with native American tribes, the Zuni adopted the name that they were given. Zuni Pueblo is small but reputed to be one of the most accommodating with a well-regarded hotel, a restaurant with local specialties, and a strong artistic tradition. It was still fairly early in the day when we landed at The Inn at Halona, the only choice for accommodation within the pueblo. The lack of options was not a problem as the hotel is well known for its atmospheric rooms filled with local artwork. The inn was everything we hoped it would be although food options were lacking. We got lunch at the cafeteria in the convenience store attached to the hotel which was very basic. I bought Cleo a T-shirt representing the local school which she loved.

Most of the commercial buildings in the pueblo were on Route 53 as it passed through the middle of town. Most of the stores were related to Native American crafts in some way. We stopped in one called Turquoise Village that supplied local artists with raw materials and also sold their creations. There was plenty of Zuni pottery, silver and turquoise jewelry, and Hopi kachina dolls on display. The kids were playing with some chunks of coal while I was browsing and before I knew it their hands and faces were covered with black dust. I hadn't had any luck getting a response to my e-mails about visiting local artists so I asked the shop owner if he knew of any who were allowing studio tours. He didn't but a local customer in the store overheard and told me he would ask around for me. I didn't expect anything to come of it but I gave him my number.

The one decent restaurant in town was shut down, likely due to COVID, which left a Subway franchise and the supermarket. The kids are fine with sandwiches but Mei Ling and I can't stand fast food so we drove out to the big supermarket at the edge of town. On the way we passed the majestic mesa called Dowa Yalanne, or Corn Mountain. The mesa served as a refuge for the Zuni from Spanish colonizers during several conflicts. The supermarket was well-supplied with fruits, loaves of the famous Zuni bread, and some prepared foods. We ate our self-catered dinner on a large outdoor deck on the upper floor of the inn.

In the evening we took a drive around town. We could see that even though the whole pueblo seemed economically depressed, there was substantial variation in the quality of the homes. Modern homes with a traditional clay brick design were mingled with others largely constructed from plywood and even some trailers. One ubiquitous sight was the hornos, traditional bread ovens that were sometimes arranged in rows of three or four outside even the most basic dwellings.

In the morning I got a surprising phone call. My acquaintance from the previous day had arranged for us to visit a well-known Zuni potter named Noreen Simplicio, whose apartment was just across the main road from the hotel. We drove over and were welcomed inside by Noreen and her husband. The home was filled with Noreen's pottery as well as the work of other artists. Zuni pottery typically displays dark red and dark brown designs on a white background. Deer and birds are frequent motifs, but we noticed that Noreen also incorporated some non-traditional, playful elements like little frogs that were climbing in and out of the bowls.

Noreen explained to the kids with the help of videos how she harvested her own clay from a special area close to the river. As more accessible areas became depleted she had to push deeper into caverns under the rock which could be dangerous for inexperienced diggers. She gave the kids some clay to experiment with and demonstrated how she painted her designs on the surface of the pot with a fine brush. She told us that every year there were fewer kids on the pueblo who were interested in continuing the tradition of Zuni pottery, much in the same way that fewer were learning the Zuni language. COVID had also done terrible damage to the population of tribal elders on the reservation. It's possible that in two or three more generations the language, the dances, and the art of the Zuni may have died out completely. We bought a couple of small bowls before leaving, partly to support Noreen and thank her for teaching us about her work and partly to keep us close to the memory of the experience.

We continued onward on Route 53 until we reached the tiny town of Ramah, where we had lunch at Stagecoach Cafe. This was the only restaurant in town and the locals seemed somewhat confused by our presence. I don't think Route 53 had started seeing much tourist traffic since the end of the most recent COVID wave. It was a cute place with average food.

There was no answer when we called our B&B so we stopped off on the way to our next destination. The door of the front building at Cimarron Rose was open but no one was in the office. We peeked around the grounds for a bit and didn't see any sign of life. It was still early in the day so we drove onward a little further to the Bandera Volcano, a large cinder cone that was the origin of most of the lava flows in the area. The volcano is on private land and the owners run the site as a tourist enterprise. A wide, spiraling gravel path took us for a half mile up the side of the cone until we reached the crater at the top. Despite the relatively gentle grade it was an exhausting climb.

Back on ground level another trail led to the ice cave, an underground cavern contain a pool of water that remains frozen year-round due to the critical mass of ice and the lack of air circulation within the chamber. These permanently frozen pools are an occasional feature of lava tunnels even in warm climates. The temperature in the cavern is freezing, of course, but on the platform it felt about the same as standing in front of the refrigerator.

There was still no answer when we called Cimarron Rose, and once again there was no sign of human activity when we drove back onto the property. At this point there was no cell phone service. This time around I knocked on one of the doors inside the office. A sleepy person who seemed to be a guest opened the door and told me that he didn't know where the owner was, but she was probably around somewhere. I figured we would just have to wait in the car but after another fifteen minutes Mei Ling decided to explore the grounds a little more deeply and eventually turned up the owner doing maintenance in one of the cottages. Our mild annoyance soon turned to delight when we realized what a serenely beautiful place we had found to spend the night. The cottages were colorful and beautifully decorated inside and out with local crafts and Native American designs. There were bird feeders everywhere which were being put to constant use by hummingbirds and woodpeckers. The only restaurant nearby was being renovated so Mei Ling cooked the pasta that the owner had generously provided. We ate on the shady patio surrounded by the gentle buzz of hummingbird wings.

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In the morning the owner brought over a breakfast of blue corn pancakes, scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit that was a welcome fortification for what promised to be a very strenuous morning. Despite the minor inconveniences I decided that if we ever chose to get off the grid entirely for a week, Cimarron Rose would be a top candidate for the location.

The plan was to retrace our route slightly and hike the Headlands Trail of El Morro. El Morro is an enormous, weathered sandstone bluff that appears to spring out of the desert just south of Route 3 and dominates the landscape. El Morro is a Spanish word that is typically translated into "headland" although this term is generally reserved geographically for projections of land into water. El Morro is probably more accurately described as a bluff. It was named by the conquistadors who discovered there was a permanent pool of fresh water at the base of the cliff. This made it a critical source of water in an arid environment that could be spotted from miles away. Of course, they were hardly the first humans to know El Morro's secret. Native Americans built an enormous pueblo at the top of the bluff seven hundred years ago, although this was abandoned long before the first Europeans arrived in the area. Those ancient Puebloans followed by the Spanish and then Anglo Americans left their marks at the base of the cliff near the water hole in the form of petroglyphs and inscriptions carved into the sandstone.

I knew from my research that there were two trails at El Morro, an easy paved trial to see the inscriptions at the base of the cliff and a more strenuous trail that ascended to the top of the bluff. My understanding was that the more difficult Headland Trail began where the easy Inscription Trail ended so my idea was to do the easy trail first and then tackle the other depending on the weather and our endurance. That plan fell apart when the ranger at the entrance assumed from our early arrival that we were intent on completing the entire circuit and directed us to what is normally the end of the Headlands Trail. She advised me it was easier to climb the stairs when we were fresh and descend on the switchbacks rather than vice versa. After about fifteen minutes of steady climbing we reached the top of the wide bluff with amazing views of the surrounding countryside.

The ranger had cautioned us to remain between the parallel lines that marked the trail. We were more than happy to follow that advice since we knew that the bluff was surrounded by tall cliffs that we wanted to keep a healthy distance from. In one or two places the markings were ambiguous and we had to push forward without being completely sure we were on the right track until once again the trail became obvious.

As we progressed along the trail we realized there was a hidden canyon within the bluff. At the base of the canyon was a remarkable sandstone monolith surrounded by trees. We also encountered the ruins of the ancient pueblo, just a small remnant of what was once an enormous complex that housed more than five hundred. Eventually we rounded the northernmost aspect of the promontory and followed the trail along the part of the bluff that was on the far side of the canyon. Here the only thing that separated us from the precipice was a metal railing with uncomfortably large gaps that a kid could easily slip through. I was quite relieved when we reached the switchbacks and began a steady descent towards the safety of the ground level.

At the base of the bluff we merged into the Inscription Trail. An easy paved path on a gentle grade took us along the side of the magnificently stained sandstone cliff, first to the rather unimpressive water hole and then to the renowned inscriptions. Seeing a four hundred year old message from an important Spanish explorer brought home the incredible history of the colonization of the area. Somewhere in the eighteenth century the Spanish inscriptions were supplanted by the chiselings of American soldiers and pioneers.

We continued on Route 53 until it ended at the intersection with I40 in Grants. Although Grants was the largest town we had encountered in New Mexico thus far, it had a quite grim and depressed atmosphere. It's a former Route 66 town without the kitsch and the souvenirs, just tattered old signs and shuttered stores. The industry that keeps Grants running these days is prisons, with three major ones close to the center of town. We ate lunch in Grants out of necessity in a featureless little restaurant that matched the town. The only surprise was a restroom that proudly billed itself as being for all genders.

El Malpais National Monument is a large area of volcanic landscape between Route 53 and Route 117 that attracts experienced hikers to its caves and lava fields. It's well known for being a dangerous area for those who aren't as experienced or prepared as they think they are. We detoured down 117 to visit the area's most famous feature, a natural sandstone arch known as La Ventana. It was just a short walk on a flat dirt trail to the arch, a relaxing complement to the much more difficult hike we had completed earlier in the day.

I had another exciting destination on our original itinerary but we weren't able to complete it. Acoma Sky City is a thousand-year-old pueblo located atop a high mesa that remains the ancestral home of the Acoma tribe. I was excited to see the ancient pueblo, the acclaimed views from the mesa, and the distinctive Acoma pottery but the pueblo had been closed due to COVID for many months. I checked online every day leading up to our passage through the area but the pueblo remains closed even four months later as I write. It's something to look forward to if we ever find a reason to return to the Albuquerque area.