Once known as the uranium capital of the world, Grants is a sleepy town of 10K souls about an hour east of Gallup. Nowadays, Grants doesn't seem to have much going for it; tourism and a couple prisons seem to be the main industries. We're leaving this AM after spending 2 nights. The RAM has been playing nice since we left Buena Vista. Maybe it just doesn't like altitudes above 8000'.
El Malpais NM sandstone bluffs overlook, with lava field in background.
The tops of the sandstone bluffs are worn smooth and have several shallow basins full of murky water.
This 6' x 4' basin is full of little polliwogs.
Natural arch a few miles south of the sandstone bluffs.
El Malpais National Monument is the primary tourism draw, and the Visitor Center is right across the road from our campground. We stopped there yesterday, prior to driving into the Monument area on highway 117. El Malpais means 'badlands'. It's a huge area of black lava flows, extremely rough, the result of several large eruptions over the last million years. Mt Taylor, one of the volcanoes, lost an estimated 6000' of elevation when it blew its top (bet that scared the crap out of the elk). Driving south on 117, you see beautiful sandstone bluffs on the left, a vast expanse of lava flows on the right.
Dueling cameras on the natural arch path.
When we're near a town and have electricity at our campsite, we often get a movie from the nearest Redbox. Usually, I research potential movies on Flixster, which provides ratings by both critics and random viewers - a very helpful selection tool. Both Redbox and Flixster are free apps that I've installed on my smart phone.
I neglected to check the rating on the movie I selected 2 nights back. It had several very accomplished actors and I thought, 'Wow! With all that talent, it has to be fantastic!' And it was: fantastically disgusting, gross and mean-spirited, the worst movie I've ever seen. Partially seen, I should say; 20 minutes was all we could stand. The name was Movie 43. Monumental talent monumentally wasted.
When we returned that movie we got another one: Quartet. It's Dustin Hoffman's first directing attempt, starring Maggie Smith. I did check the ratings this time. They were favorable and we found the move quite enjoyable.
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