On our speeded roundtrip through the USanian southwest, we ended up in Gallup one night - a hilarious little neonlight town in northern New Mexico, It's greatest attraction probably the infamous Route 66 passing through.
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Downtown Gallup is a 12 block area dotted with amusing turn of the century architecture, filled with tacky souvenir stores playing on the native American aspect. Also a decent native American museum in the Gallup Cultural Center, located in a restored railroad station. Surrounding town are various natural sights of interest, as well Acoma Sky City - apparently an old pueblo of the Acoma people situated on a mesa rock, which should be interesting enough, but we were put off by all the signs advertising for the Sky City Casinos.
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Enjoyed the whole experience. The town is the incarnation of tacky Americana, and that's just what's so fascinating about it. An aboundance of weird souvenirs, tribal dance shows, old west bars and stunning desert landscape makes the town fun for a while.
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The USA being the only place I've ever been with drive-through national monuments, we enjoyed the drive through the Morro and Malpais national monuments - a kind of lunar landscape with lava beds, cones and caves.
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Morro and Malpais national monuments as mentioned above; Àcoma Sky City; Canyon de Chelly inside the Navajo reservation, mostly done on guided tours; Four Corners Monument, where you can stand in fours states - Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado - at once; various native pueblos.
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There's a strip of cheap motels, and slightly more expensive motels, ugly motels and slightly nicer motels... we of course stayed in the cheapest (and probably ugliest) one we found - so no real recommendations there, but hey, it was $20 a night for a double. Plenty of accommodations in town. Or you could of course bring your own huge camper van, preferrably towing your other car behind it =)
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Plenty. All tacky, old west style - heaps of friendly wannabe cowboys.
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Angela's Cafe downtown had decent organic food, all the cheap chains present - what beats a McDonald breakfast when you're in tackyland anyway... and there are various other restaurants around.
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Published on Friday June 25th, 2004
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9 votes
