My pictures, and my blog post have no relation to each other whatsoever

Click the pics, they start with a lot of hot air, and end with a history lesson.

Soon the balloons are tussling over inflating space.

It was serendipity that put me on I-40 heading West yesterday morning, and it was serendipity that made me pull into the Petrified Forest National Park about an hour later.

I didn't really want to go there; I've been there numerous times in the past; I was even there last year in the little bronco. And to make matters worse, it was cloudy and sprinkling rain; it definitely was not a day for the Park, but it got worse. Finally, a few miles into the Park, it started pouring rain, so I pulled into one of the pull-overs kicking myself for coming to a Park where the view is everything, but because of the rain, I couldn't see 100 feet in front of me.

I waited in the Lance for about an hour; it had mostly stopped raining, so I figured I would keep going through the Park and hit I-40 on the other side. A few more miles and it stopped raining even though it was still totally overcast. So I pulled over to another view area to take a picture.... And I was amazed!

I've only seen the Petrified Forest National Park when it was hot and dry, and in all the years I've been coming here, I've never seen it rain, but today the dry washes had water running through them, and the broken petrified trees were shining like jewels because they were wet.

Everything in the Petrified National Forest looked new to me because the rain had washed off the dust and the dirt and made the broken ends of the petrified trees shine, so I drove to all the farthest reaches of the Park, seeing everything through new eyes.

And I ended up spending so much time there that I didn't get out of the Park until about 4 p.m., so instead of heading on down the road, I boondocked next to a gift shop parking lot, with a couple of other RVs, just outside the Petrified National Forest for the night.

But once their standing up straight there's plenty of room for everyone.

These pictures are from one of the balloon launch areas at Red Rock Park, there were others that I didn't get to. It was interesting to walk among the balloons and talk to the people, and I was definitely looking forward to standing in the middle of them all while they left the ground, but I was happy just getting to do what I did.

Now my pictures have switched from the Red Rock Park balloon rally, to driving through downtown Gallup on Route 66.

The El Rancho hotel is the most famous place in Gallup, NM, and arguably one of the most famous places on Route 66 thanks to Hollywood using the Gallup area to film numerous cowboy movies including John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day, Betty Grable, and many other huge movie stars from back in my day.

Even the El Rancho sign is famous. It's one of the nicer ones left over from the Route 66 era.

Downtown Gallup. The kindest way to describe it would be "shabby." A less kind way to describe it would be "somewhat dangerous".

This rather large building in downtown Gallup is built out of stone. I think a lot of people can build a building out of bricks, because they're all the same size. But it takes a special kind of skill to build a building this size out of random shaped rocks.

At one time Gallup used to be a town of wealth and prosperity. But when I-40 bypassed the town, and  the Hollywood studios bean counters figured they could make movies cheaper by building  soundstages so they didn't have to pay John Wayne's hotel bills to stay at the El Rancho hotel Gallup took a double hit from which its never recovered .

When the interstate was built about 1/2  mile away from route 66 in Gallup it probably didn't kill the downtown area immediately because people still had to go over to route 66 to get gas, and a place to sleep for the night.

But the smart money built businesses on I-40 and slowly but surely route 66 businesses started losing money so they no longer had the financial ability to protect themselves from the drunks, the thieves, the bums, the drug addicts, and the greedy politicians, so they soon withered and died.... Does this remind anyone of today's big cities?