Fire and Ice, El Morro

Today our first destination was Sky City and the Acoma Pueblo, and it was closed. We happened to go there during the 5 day period when they are shut down, even though they are usually open 7 days a week. Sooo, that was a letdown. After that "detour" we went to see the area called "Fire and Ice" about 1 1/2 hours west of Albuquerque. Here you can hike to a dormant volcano and then walk over to an ice cave, where the temp is 31 F all year. The Bandera volcano was kind of neat to see, as the cinder cone is still mostly intact and you can see the lava flow and the path it cut through the forest 3000 years ago. Easy walk to the volcano and back. Going down to the ice cave involves 64 uneven stairs and you can feel it getting cooler with every step, which was nice since it was the typical 90+ degrees. We had brought warm clothes with us, but we didn't need them as it is only really cold at the bottom and you're not there long enough to worry about it. You can literally go up a step or two and be warm again. Honestly while the ice cave is cool (hehe), it was a bit of a let down. It wasn't as spectacular as I had hoped and you can't walk down in the cave itself, just to a viewing platform. It is interesting to see ice that has been there thousands of years in an area that is so hot in the summer. After the Fire and Ice area we drove about 20 minutes over to El Morro Monument, which is also know as Inscription Rock. This area has a spring fed pond in a rock formation that has been used for hundreds (thousands?) of years as a stopping point on the main trail used by both natives and settlers in the west. Because of this you can see many different inscriptions, from petroglyphs made by early natives to fancy etched inscriptions by the Spanish and others coming through in the 1800s. By the time we left El Morro we were starving as we never had lunch so went in search of a town to eat in, but we had no cell service so there was no way to use Yelp to find a good place to eat, no to mention any way to use the GPS on our phones, so we were left to use our survival instincts, guess how well that went. The signs coming out of El Morro pointed to towns either way, the one to the west was closer so we headed that way, mistake. The first "town" we came to didn't seem to have anything other than a couple of shacks, so we kept going. The next town was in the Zuni reservation and there really wasn't much there either, but by this point we were 2 1/2 hours west of Albuquerque and had to head back. In the end we ate at a Subway in the gas station on the Zuni reservation, as that seemed the safest bet. It did the job. Tomorrow we head to southwest New Mexico to see the sites in that area.