Albuquerque

This year has been a crazy whirlwind of work and adventures but I have the privilege of working for a company that closes down for the week of July 4th so with that I took a much needed vacation. It has been 4 years since I have been out West and I have been missing it sorely so the plan was to spend most of the week at Meris' ranch but since she still had guests I decided to avail myself of the national park sites around Albuquerque.

 My first stop was El Morro National Monument. It is located on an ancient east-west trail and the main feature is a great sandstone promontory with a pool of water at its base.

 Due to the water, this site has seen many centuries of travelers. The remains of a mesa top pueblo are atop the promontory where between about 1275 to 1350 AD, up to 1500 people lived in this 875 room pueblo. The view atop the mesa was spectacular. 

Travelers left signatures, names, dates, and stories of their treks. While some of the inscriptions are fading, there are still many that can be seen today, some dating to the 17th century. It was so crazy to me how long varied these inscriptions are. There are simple names all the way up to a paragraph in cursive writing! There are also some pictures carved out.

When the park was first founded park rangers thought it would be a good idea to color in the inscriptions to make them stand out but  now the park is doing a lot to preserve these carvings the correct way.

The sister park to El Morro is El Malpais which is from the Spanish term Malpaís, meaning badlands, due to the extremely barren and dramatic volcanic field that covers much of the park's area. The best way to see this park is by hiking but there are some places you can drive to if you don't have a lot if time.

Sandstone Bluffs

The coolest place is La Ventana arch which is the second largest natural arch in New Mexico. The landscape around there was gorgeous. 

The whole afternoon I passed rarely a car and every site I went to only had a handful of people.  It was so nice to be out in the wilderness again and I had sorely missed driving down wide open roads where your site is only limited by the horizon. Showers were also passing through which kept it nice and cool and gave the sky some beautiful clouds.

Flowering cactus