Petroglyphs National Monument

The next morning dawned hot and sunny in Albuquerque. My plan was to immediately leave the city but as I headed out I passed a sign for Petroglyphs National Monument and I couldn't resist stopping by. Jess and I had conquered this site on our Labor Day 2008 roadtrip but the one spot we didn't get to was Rinconada Canyon. Actually we did make it there but the spot was closing for the day and we saw 2 guys with shovels hiking in so we wisely left. This time, at 7am in the morning, there was only a woman and her dog hiking around so I felt much safer.

The trail is 2 miles long round trip and is packed full of petroglyphs. Archeologists believe ancestral Puebloans made most of the 1,200 petroglyphs in Rinconada Canyon 400 to 700 hundred years ago. Pueblo elders believe the images are as old as time. They also believe that the petroglyphs choose when and to whom they reveal themselves. I was privileged to see many of them.

I was so glad I had stopped at the canyon and taken the time to hike in. I was riding high on petroglyphs so I decided to stop by Boca Negra canyon which is the main area of the park. The highlight is the Mesa Top trail which leads to a 360 degree view of Albuquerque. 

What is most fascinating to me is that no one can say for sure what many petroglyphs portray. Native peoples may hold complex and widely varying interpretations of many images, depending upon context. It is not always appropriate to even reveal the meanings of images so it is really up to each person to see what the petroglyphs mean to them.

Finally leaving Albuquerque I headed out through the National Forest on my way to the Salinas Pueblo Missions. The forest was closed due to such extreme fire danger but it was still beautiful.