Day 11: Albuquerque (NM) - Gallup (NM) via Petroglyph National Monument and El Morro National Monument (207 miles)

Before setting out on Old Route 66 West again, we started the day at Petroglyph National Monument. The park is located on a mesa overlooking Albuquerque and allowed us to see dozens of petroglyphs dating from as early as 500 B.C. until A.D. 1700 by hiking only a couple of short trails.
We then drove on towards Gallup. Besides the generally stunning scenery along the way, the hiking options were overwhelming. There are many attractive national parks and monuments in this part of New Mexico, but we decided to pick one and hike a longer trail instead of only seeing a bit of everything. We picked El Morro National Monument for its diversity: By hiking a 2.5 mile loop, we were able to see the stunning landscape and rock formations, ancient pueblo ruins as well as historic inscriptions from early Spanish conquistadores and settlers on the rock walls.

So far we completed 2815 miles of our trip and crossed 11 states (MA, NY, PA, OH, IN, IL, MO, KS, OK, TX, NM) and three time zones.