Uncategorized – Page 38 – Living Wonderously

A short distance from the main part of Bandelier National Monument, an area on the top of a mesa that was once inhabited by the Ancestral Tewa Pueblo people, has an interpretative trail that lets visitors view petroglyphs, cave dwellings and other ruins that have been excavated here. One of the most interesting features is the part of the trail that has been worn into the rock by generations of pueblo people as they passed back and forth from their mesa-top homes to the fields and springs in the canyon below. You are literally walking in the footsteps of the people who lived here hundreds of years ago.

trail map — Map showing trail as it wraps around mesa and ascends wooden ladders.

IMG_20150309_123426808 — Looking behind at part of the trail ascending the mesa.

IMG_20150309_124111328_HDR — At the eastern edge of the mesa.

IMG_20150309_124253392 — Stopping to consult the interpretative guide.

IMG_20150309_124522546 — One of the pathways worn into the rock.

IMG_20150309_132224628_HDR — Ascending one of the ladders.

IMG_20150309_133306701 — On top of the mesa. Storm clouds to the north threatened, but we only felt a couple of drops.

IMG_20150309_134718886_HDR — The steps turned out to be easier than the ladder.

We finally made a trip to northwestern New Mexico to explore the De-Na-Zin and Bisti Wilderness Areas. It’s an area of badlands that I’d been wanting to see, but it’s a bit too far from Albuquerque for a day hike. By spending the night in Farmington, we had plenty of time to hike through De-Na-Zin the first day and then Bisti the second day.

Saying that we hiked through the 2 areas is probably not the most accurate description. There are more than 40,000 acres of remote badlands with no marked trails and no way to see all of it in one visit. We were fortunate to have Ken and Sue, our hike leader friends, join us on the trip. Sue had GPS tracks along for both days to keep us from getting lost and to guide us to some of the most interesting formations. Of course, if you get excited about eroded rock hoodoos and exposed geologic formations like we do then it would be hard to find formations that weren’t interesting.

Here are a few of the photos we took:

Besides rocks eroded into weird shapes, both areas have amazing examples of petrified wood logs and splinters scattered everywhere. Here are photos of some of the petrified logs. Trying to photograph the piles of petrified wood chips and splinters didn’t give a sense of the detail, but the logs are quite impressive, some of them over 50 feet long.