after sleeping at the red lion in gallup, we got up the next morning and headed over to the zuni pueblo. we enjoyed the scenery on the way there. there were a lot more trees in the zuni reservation land than we had seen previously in new mexico.
we enjoyed the stripes on this rocky mountain--and the interesting looking cave. given that it was zuni land, though, we didn't venture out towards it.
in the parking lot at the zuni pueblo visitors center, we found this. it is remarkable to us how many flossers of this ilk throw their seemingly-used flossers on the ground.
the sun face welcome sign.
if you haven't been able to figure it out yet, we are fans of the hornos. how fun to have an oven outside your house like this.
the original santo inside the zuni catholic church. from the 1700s maybe. 
we also love colorful corn.
b loved this pot--it was his favorite of the whole trip. the shape is awesome and those tadpoles. one of the reasons this was such a cool pot is we didn't see another one quite like it. 
more tadpoles and (this time) frogs. another really cool design.
some information about the zuni people. the zuni pueblo visitors center is not as big and nice as the acoma visitors center. but it was interesting in its own way. honestly, it's often the less flashy things that are more interesting.
the original catholic church in the pueblo. a neat old picture.
this is how it looks now.
our guide told us that they are going to restore the church and turn it into a museum. she told us that there are some zuni catholics (as well as zuni mormons and christians and non-traditionalists), but the overwhelming majority of zuni people in the pueblo are traditionalists. i can't remember what word she used, but by traditionalist i mean that they practice the traditional zuni religious and ceremonial practices. the zuni believe in the kachina cult and have kivas where they perform sacred rites. given that most of the zuni are not catholics, turning this old church into a museum makes sense to me.
we couldn't take pictures inside the church, but it was very interesting. a zuni-catholic artist made huge murals of several of the main kachinas along both of the main walls inside. one side had images of the kachinas who come out during the warmer months, and the other wall had kachinas who come out during the colder months. the murals were beautiful. our guide was not a fan of the murals and indicated that alot of zuni were not fans of them. they think it is inappropriate to have these sacred images inside a catholic church. as outsiders we would see this as highly syncretic. but for traditional zunis, this could seem very sacreligious. i could see why she didn't like them.
the cemetery outside the church was really neat.
it was another gray-sky day, but--again--it didn't rain on us during our tour of the pueblo.
our guide took us around some of the old part of the pueblo.
this is the central plaza where the zuni hold their dances and other public ceremonies.
it's a pretty small space--so people sit on the roofs as well as on the ground floor. 
there was one woman in our group who was completely (and kind-of embarrassingly) enamored with this kitten. it was not clear to me why she liked it so much--i guess because she must just LOVE cats. she went on and on about it, which was way more interesting (in my opinion) than the cat itself.
these dogs tried to scare us when we walked up to these hornos.
you can see that the zuni pueblo is a bit more ramshakle than the acoma (or as you'll see later, the taos). but it was really interesting, and the zuni seem to be a people very dedicated to and proud of their beliefs, which is always appealing to us. our guide said that they have kept off development/mining from their land--and they don't even have a casino. we saw tons of casinos, in nearly every pueblo/reservation, so that is no small feat. but, to us at least, a cool one.
an horno in use.
this man was working on kachina statues when we walked by.
on our way out of the old part of the pueblo, we saw this sun face. wouldn't you love to have that painted on your house?
we stopped at some shops in town.
naturally, we were drawn to the kusharis.
and we found a sun face bolo tie--very similar to the one our friend back home, steve, gave brian recently. 
so many cool things to see. you can never get enough of it.
on our drive out of the pueblo and back to gallup, we came across an approaching dirt cloud on the highway. from a distance i was worried it might be a sand storm (nm is famous for its high winds). i felt a bit scared, but then realized it was just a truck--maybe a street sweeper?--kicking up all that dirt. we were safe.
back in gallup, it started to rain again. we opted to go to a museum i'd read about. the museum was supposed to be very infrequently visited by tourists (or probably even locals) but have an amazing collection of kachinas. both of those being very appealing to us, we headed over there in the heavy rain.
the kachina collection didn't disappoint. there were so many kachinas. this collection would undoubtedly be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
they had other american indian artwork--like this sand painting.
and it had images embedded into the floor for different tribes/groups of people. again the kushari with his watermelon. why does he like watermelons so much?
back in gallup, we stopped at another man's treasures--a thrift store of sorts. we loved it there and found some cool stuff.
we found these special beans but couldn't think of who they would be just right for. so we didn't get any.
we did some more window shopping--and some shopping shopping. it was in gallup where i got my turquoise bracelet, which i love.
gallup seems like the right place to find cowboy boots. i was recently in nashville and saw an image almost identical to this in a store there. i understand that cowboy boots are popular there, but they still seem out of place to me there. cowboy boots just seem natural in the rugged west.
what a cat and bird.
so many kushari figures--all in one statue.
we found this at a place that had some used items. oh brian and i wanted to see a roadrunner while we were in nm, but sadly this was the closest we got to one. of course, we did see a lot of yucca there.
a dead snake we saw. it does blend in nicely with the rocks.
yucca!
a cotton-tailed rabbit.
as we were driving through gallup, we came across this wetlands area. we parked and got out with our binoculars and spotted several new birds for the year! we saw a blue-winged teal, great-tailed grackle, barn swallow, and several western kingbirds.
i like this shot. really, it was kind-of a dumpy looking area right alongside the highway, but this makes it look 
arg! another flosser.
i love finding places like this--totally unexpected yet full of birds. and the great-tailed grackle was a new bird for my life list.
there were some prairie dogs there.
at the suggestion of the owner of another man's treasures, we went to anthony's for dinner, but couldn't help by get a picture next to hollywood orthodontics. it seemed like a funny name for an orthodontics shop anywhere other than hollywood.
our restaurant was fine--not one of the best we had, but our food had chili sauce on it. they definitely new how to top a dish!
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