Snow Day

Snow. Sigh. Who thinks of snow when they think of New Mexico anyway? I started in the road to El Morro, but it quickly became icy and slippery and appeared to be worse and worse so I turned around. I went to Walmart and got my oil changed and my tire fixed. I tooled around town. I went to Richardson's Trading Post and Pawn shop and a few other pawn shops to admire the really huge and fabulous turquoise jewelry. Natives make it and then pawn it to get money. Some of them are heirloom pieces though.

I tried to find the Codetalkers Museum about the Navajo code-talkers during WWII (a code the Japanese never broke). I finally found it housed in the Chamber of Commerce and it was more like a display with photos and some official documents. It was interesting to see, but not as in-depth as I would have liked. I got more information from some Gallup propaganda that I picked up. The reason the code was never broken was in part bc the Navajo language is now a written language so there was no record of it anywhere and bc it was a code USING the Navajo language - not just the Native Americans speaking to each other. Other interesting tidbits - they never made any mistakes, military officials believe we may not have been able to win victories in the Pacific without it - specifically Iwo Jima, and the Codetalkers were so important that they had their own bodyguards protecting them (though they worked in pairs). I may need to read a book about this...

This afternoon I braved the cold to take the walking tour of downtown Gallup to admire the many murals. They are pretty(and thanks to the desperate lady at the chamber of commerce i have detailed information about each nuance of the detailed murals. what do i do with this stuff?). I also went in several more pawn shops and native american galleries.

It has been snowing on and off all day. I am bored. I loaded some photos into previous posts and some new ones from the last two days. I am waiting for Rachel and Nick to get home and trying to decide what to do tomorrow. Do I go down the way I wanted to today tomorrow on my way to Albuquerque or do I loop back here to Gallup so that I can go to the Saturday flea market? Is it going to dump snow tonight?