{"id":1784,"date":"2008-10-03T10:40:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T14:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2008-10-03T10:40:18","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T14:40:18","slug":"off-to-the-balloon-fiesta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1784","title":{"rendered":"Off to the Balloon Fiesta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re heading out this morning to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta!<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday we took a daytrip to El Malpais National Monument and El Morro National Monument, both of which are about 30-40 miles south of Grants.  \u00a0 El Malpais is a large area of volcanic origin, with lava tube caves, cinder cones, craters, and other features that are fun to hike around. \u00a0 A chat with the ranger on duty, and a three-mile hike gave us \u00a0 a nice overview of the park&#8217;s major features.<\/p>\n<p>El Morro is only 18 miles away but entirely different. \u00a0 It is much smaller, comprised of a bluff of very soft sandstone and a permanent pool of water that was a popular stop for native Americans, Spanish explorers, and settlers during the western expansion. \u00a0 &#8220;Inscription rock&#8221; holds most of their signatures, petroglyphs, and graffiti. \u00a0 The oldest European signature dates to 1605, but there are even old Puebloan petroglyphs that of course have no dates<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll get pictures up later, but right now we are rushing to get out of Grants in time to drive to Albuquerque and meet the other 29 Airstreams for a caravan into the Fiesta grounds. \u00a0 We&#8217;ll be parked right next to the balloon launching field for the next four nights. \u00a0 You can expect a lot of photographs soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re heading out this morning to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta! Yesterday we took a daytrip to El Malpais National Monument and El Morro National Monument, both of which are about 30-40 miles south of Grants. \u00a0 El Malpais is a large area of volcanic origin, with lava tube caves, cinder cones, craters, and other features [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}