Best Natural Places to visit in New Mexico. White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns & more

this the west is big channel is dedicated to helping you and millions of others explore the west this is the rio grande gorge and its famous bridge near tahoes from here gps data shows that new mexico is splitting itself apart along the entire length of the state it's what geologists call a rift and it's centered on the rio grande lucky for us these natural forces have created beautiful and varied landscapes for us to drive through and explore there's vast white sands trails through lava flows and lots of evidence of past civilizations we'll hike to a mountain peak explore a big underground room and drive to the top of a volcano in between we'll drive on a super volcano and hike to cliff dwellings made from its ash we'll get there on hassle-free roads some long and straight others twisty and on one there was a tumbleweed warning yes that's what the weatherman said the rift includes three national parks and many national monuments and state parks they're all rich in beauty and history and on this trip i'll tell you how to explore over 20 of them most have easy trails to photo ops even if you're in your 70s and blind we'll meet her later the area is just full of history including that of our space program and you never know what you're going to run into in new mexico maybe even something out of this world now is the perfect time to explore new mexico these days many of our western parks suffer from overcrowding and it's hard to become one with nature when you're jammed together with 50 strangers on a park bus and that's assuming you can even get into a park the more popular western parks limit the number of visitors by forcing them to get multi-day reservations months in advance so on my next adventure i decided to tour new mexico's less crowded parks and they can be visited year round to prove it i did the six day road trip twice once in december and the other in may i shot a lot of good stuff and ended up with a video that's rather long so feel free to skip ahead if you get a little bored to check out the next part which you might like better and subscribing to the channel will make it easy to come back to it and by the way if you have a question or a comment please leave it below and i know this is very difficult and even impossible if you're watching this on a big tv but if you want to leave a comment and please subscribe try doing it on your phone it's much easier this is a map of the route the stops aren't exactly in a straight line and i vary my route with each trip if you're flying in you can start at either el paso or albuquerque both of my trips went from south to north and our first stop is white sands national park white sands is one of the most photogenic places in the west i've photographed it many times going back to the early 2000s it covers over 200 square miles but it has only one road and it's just eight miles long and it can easily be driven in less than an hour so why have i spent so many days here and in the little air force base town of alamogordo well because of the dunes they're always different and you never know what's over the next dune it's a vast mostly trackless place perfect for those who like to explore or for those who like to isolate and contemplate as always the goal of this video is to encourage and to help you come this way too it's located in the tullarusa basin portion of the rio grande rift where 20 thousand-year-old footprints have been found i can't take you there but there is a nearby place where you're free to explore and discover pre-columbian rock art over 20 000 of them the park is generally open from dawn to dusk unless there's a missile test going on at the nearby range on this day the rangers opened the gate a few minutes early but one time i did have to wait over an hour because there was a missile test going on the entrance fee is just 25 dollars per vehicle but if you're doing the other parks on the rift it's well worth buying the annual parks pass the handout they give you with its map it'll come in pretty handy and it's worth studying because well it's easy to get lost in all this white it happened to a small group on my last trip maps are also available for download on the park's website this one shows important stops on the road with distance markers there are trails here [Music] a boardwalk trail an amphitheater picnic areas and a backcountry camping area there's also an area for horseback riding and probably the most popular spot the west filming area when i get to the park early i like to shoot the sunrise so i stopped at the first parking area it was for the dune life nature trail which is a short one-mile loop the trails here aren't like the other trails you may have seen on my channel like the ones in glacier national park here they're not really trails they're more like pathways with postmarkers to keep you from getting lost mostly this is a place to wander and explore on your own without any boundaries and that's what makes this place unique the sunrise wasn't bad and i got a nice shot of the ridge behind the dunes that ridge is where a lot of the sand comes from if you subscribe to my channel you know that i try to teach something about the landscape and if you're not a member why don't you subscribe now thanks by the way it's not a good idea to park on the road because these guys have a job to do there's another short trail to a playa or dry lake across the road but we're gonna head to the dunes you may be wondering why the sand is white well this isn't typical beach sand which is basically quartz this sand is gypsum which has a lot of calcium which is of course white before wandering through the dunes we're going to do the inter dune boardwalk it's the only wheelchair accessible trail in the park it's less than a half mile long and it has lots of info signs [Music] the boardwalk is aluminum and just above the sand the first few info signs tell us about the wildlife now the only living things i've ever seen here are bugs but i have seen a snake hole and there are some signs that warn that there are rattlesnakes around but again i've never seen one i've also seen tracks these are likely from a kit fox which is about the size of a small dog they're nocturnal but you may find some of their footprints in the morning this sign has a message about the importance of cyanobacteria i'm a fan of this stuff because it gave the planet our breathable oxygen and they make cryptobiotic soil which is the base for plant life here in the desert it takes decades even centuries for these bacteria to create a thin soil that plants can use to grow sadly one footstep can kill it this is one reason dogs must be kept on a short leash the rangers don't want them to run far afield and damage this basic building block of desert life there are benches along the way and a shelter near the end to get out of the sun at the far end there's a viewpoint over the dunes and holloman air force base in the distance there's also a series of info signs that tell us how all this gypsum got here turns out that millions of years ago this area was covered by the permian sea heat from below caused the land to rise kind of like this and this caused the sea to reseed when the heat and pressure went away the land went down and the sea rushed in once again and this process happened several times when the water was deep dirt and clay were deposited and when the sea went away a gypsum layer was deposited and if you don't believe me look at the distant ridge you can see the layers in the rock when all this happened the whole area was flat those mountain ridges were all at the same level as here near sea level and today white sands is 3 900 feet above sea level it was much later when all this was uplifted during the rifting process that created the basin between the ranges so how did all the gypsum get here well it was all locked in those rocks up in the ranges well rain and snow dissolved the gypsum and over time it all flowed down here and of course the wind helped too okay that's enough school for this episode our next stop is for the sunset stroll meeting area it got its name because when conditions allow a ranger leads an informative tour from here it's generally popular and something that everyone should do at least once i've spent more than a couple of sunsets here and i'll show you more of those shots in a bit but since we're here let's walk around the first thing you notice is how much easier it is to walk on than beach sand it's much firmer if you like to shoot vegetation well this side of the road has more plants and some of them can tell us about erosion rates this one started life on top of the dune in its lifetime the dune blew away it just moved on exposing its root system the ripples were rather nice on this day so i looked around for a place to put the camera but this was something i wasn't the first to notice since they were here first etiquette dictates that it's my responsibility to stay out of their shots so i walked around a bit more and then headed to the other side of the road i climbed to dune it's a short climb and when i got to the top i saw rows and rows of dunes all the way to the edge of the basin this aircraft shot shows just how many rows there are again the walking is easy it's much easier than beach sand and it's also cooler which is one reason why a lot of people choose to walk in bare feet it's time to move on now but we'll return to this spot for the sunset show [Music] as we head down to the loop let's talk about the wind on a few of my visits it's been brutal pelting sand doesn't feel good on the skin and it can turn blue skies almost white it can also damage camera gear which is why i shoot with an iphone or a gopro when there's blowing sand they're really good at keeping the dust out one way to get around the wind is shoot early in the morning when the wind tends to be lower there are some benefits to high winds though it erases footprints late in the day the dunes are covered in them a strong overnight wind will erase them giving us a clean canvas in the morning just beyond the fork and the road there's a picnic area and notice that each table has a windbreak there's an amphitheater for ranger talks near the next parking area and a view of holloman air force base from the curiously named area 19. when we get to the bend we can only head back to the main road it's the turnaround point [Music] and the first parking area is for the alkali flats trail it's really more of a route than a trail with skinny numbered markers to keep you on track it's a five mile loop that takes you to an alkali flat in back and it's anything but flat as it goes up and down the dunes it got its name because at the far end of the loop it takes you to an alkali flat my first time here the temp was a hundred and ten i took the trail not thinking too much of the heat i was having too good of a time i wasn't sweaty and maybe i was too captivated by the park to really realize what my body was going through i wandered off the trail chasing good shots and could no longer see the markers but i could see a salty residue on my now otherwise red arms my one water bottle was empty and i was feeling a little odd and also stupid eventually i found some footprints that might have been mine and finally found the parking lot the trail is a five mile loop and i don't know how much of it i did before finding my car but because of the experience i never did the trail again the moral of the story the altitude dry air and heat can affect you more than you think especially if you've never been here before the name on the map for the next parking area is called the west filming area this is probably the most popular area in the park and as its name suggests it's great for photos as you'll see in a minute but many come here just to play on the steeper dunes found near the parking lot some run up the hills in bare feet others slide down the hills and plastic discs this is so popular that the gift shop sells them and the sand isn't as slippery as snow but it looks like it's just as much fun and of course much warmer others bring their gear farther afield to have some private family time hopefully they bring plenty of water too in the intro i told you that white sands is a great park to wander around and this is a great place to do that these shots show you why there are great spots to show rows of dunes [Music] everybody knows that you can get great shots at sunrise and sunset but here the dunes can even look great during the middle of the day [Music] it may take a while but i always look for a spot with clean ripples and then i play with the height of the camera to fill a bunch of the frame with those ripples [Music] so [Music] i never know how much i walk in these dunes but i'm sure it's quite a bit and patience always helps sometimes i just sit and wait for the light to get right like this person it's a particularly good idea to do this at sunset when it might get a bit crowded and you may lose your spot and when i find a good spot during the day i try to come back to it at sunrise or sunset [Music] in a place like this it's hard to shoot a bad image [Music] but to get a great image you have to have great conditions and you have to find a great place and that can take time and that's the challenge and the hope that keeps me coming back for example i've never seen a horse here but how cool would it be to capture a horse running across the dunes now i know i've been talking an awful lot about photography but i don't want to leave the impression that this place is only for photographers it's a unique weird and naturally wonderful place it's a great place for anyone even if they just like to sit and take it all in most of the footage you've seen was shot in may or december but i've been here when the midday heat is just too much and i needed a break that's a good time to check out the visitor center or some of the attractions in nearby alamogordo on my december trip there were still some coved rules and there was a line to get in inside it's small and more of a non-profit bookstore than a visitor center but there is a movie about the park and folks to answer questions the gift shop is down this hall on one of my visits this connecting hallway was closed and we had to go around to the back as you can see there was quite a line inside you'll find plenty of souvenirs to buy like souvenir pottery and those discs we talked about and of course something to eat and drink there is no restaurant so fill your cooler with a picnic lunch if you want to take a midday break go into town alamogordo is just 15 miles to the north by the way when you're exiting the park if you turn right instead of left you'll have to go through a border control checkpoint after you make a u-turn to head back the other way because of the air force base and the park there are plenty of dining and hotel options for visitors in alamogordo there's fast food casual dining options as well as the largest walmart i've ever been in a little further up the road there's even a winery and a pistachio farm with lots of tasty treats if you have more time after lunch i highly recommend a short drive to the north end of town to the new mexico space history museum even if you just have the time to see the outdoor display i'll talk more about this place in a few minutes so if you need a midday break there are plenty of things to do in town before you head back to what many believe is the best time of day in white sands sunset the hours before sunset are some of the parks busiest with the light change shadows come from the other direction so the place looks different at twilight the temperature drops quickly there's often a crowd near the sunset stroll area if there's clouds they add a few colors to the scene before the sun drops below the mountains on clear days the sunset is often even better the west mountains are in silhouette in the other direction they're a glow it's a really interesting shared experience and without the wind amazingly quiet years ago i took one of my favorite photos of the park here at around this time and on moonless nights the stars are incredible in december due to the shallow angle of the sun's path twilight lasts quite a while when darkness falls strangers compare notes she is from north carolina now going from park to park sleeping in her car and cooking ramen on a camp stove and she's not the only one well my name is jess i go by jj i've been living in new york city for the past two years and i went on this road trip during the pandemic with my friends i flew out to the west and i was like been dreaming about you know seeing the rest of america and so i started playing this february once my lease ended new york city i just got a car within two weeks flew to montana because glacier national park is awesome and been doing that since then she chose to go to glacier after watching youtube videos after describing mine to her she said i must saw yours as i was about to ask her her story a group of dutch girls asked us for help they were lost and couldn't find their car with the help of my park map jj drove them to it eventually a ranger drives by announcing that the park is about to close and we have to leave well that's white sands national park it's a fantastic place from dusk to dawn and i hope that you'll come here and check it out as well as some of the other places in the rio grande rift so how many days should you stay well i'd say at least two or three for nothing else to do a couple of sunsets so when should you come well i'd say just about any time if you don't mind the summer heat you may also want to plan a trip around special events like the annual balloon fest or on the rare days when rangers lead tours to lake lucero it's the only way to see that part of the park if you're going to stay a few days you're going to need a place to stay in alamogordo and there are several places to choose from i continue to support small family owned and run motels the rooms are nice with a fridge and a microwave and i get to park right next to my door which makes for an easy loadout and load in during our midday break i promised that we'd go back to the new mexico space museum for a better look and that's what we're going to do now you can probably tell that i really like this place the outdoor display is incredible part of the missile test range can be seen in the valley below and these items were tested there including this remnant of a v2 rocket and of course the apollo emergency escape system do whatever they're testing today this nike missile was designed to protect our cities during the cold war these are sounding rockets i don't really know what that is these are target drones there's also a few rocket engines and they look like they could be used today [Music] my favorite is the saturn v rocket engine five of these were used in the first stage to launch men to the moon in the 365 foot high saturn 5. it's quite something to not only see it but also touch it it's over 50 years old and looks brand new like it could fly today this was at the other end of that rocket well it's a mock-up it was used to test the capsule's ability to land in the water there's also a mercury capsule mock-up that was used to test instrumentation placement this is all real stuff and this stealth fighter backup was used for pilots to practice egress that's getting out of the cockpit i can't show you much of the stuff inside but the elevators set the tone there's a moon rock many space suits and the jetpack simulator that was used in the space shuttle era there's even a tribute to gene roddenberry who created star trek i never knew that he was a decorated pilot in world war ii if you're really into this stuff there's another museum about 40 miles south of the park at the test site base entrance it has another great static display including mockups of the first atom bombs that were developed and tested nearby inside there's a lot of early rocket development displays if you or someone in your party isn't into all this techy stuff there is other stuff to do in alamogordo the wine bar people also have a pistachio farm which in december granite doesn't look like much but but they have a restaurant and other tasty treats and for you rvers and campers there are private campgrounds and there's a place to go boondocking between the park and the air force base [Music] for me white sands is the highlight of the southern end of the rio grande rift trip the park is something everyone should see and the variety of side trips means there's fun for everyone including our next stop on the road trip which is about an hour to the north it's one of my favorite places it's small and i bet you never even heard of it it's called three rivers petroglyph site i discovered it almost by accident after my first trip to white sands in the early 2000s when i was driving back i saw this sign and since exploring should be a part of every trip i decided to follow the arrows i had seen a few petroglyphs in utah's parks and in arizona's petrified forest but i've never been to a park that was named after them by the way petroglyph literally means rock carving rivers is small and littered with dark rocks covered with thousands of ancient rock carvings i'm not sure you can find any place with more petroglyphs in such a small area there's also the ruins of a few homes of those who made them it's less than an hour north of alamogordo and between several of the rifts parks so if you're doing the roof tour no matter which route you take you're going to have to pass by this place and since it's just three miles off the main road you need to check it out it has a small campground with a couple of rv hookups the ranger in the very small visitor center accepted my all parks pass gave me a park info pamphlet told me it was legal to fly the drone and let me know where the old village is most of the glyphs are near a two mile round trip trail there is no fence and just two rules to protect it the next sign is a little scarier now i've been here five or six times and i've never seen a snake of any kind this bridge it's over a dry gully was this one of the three rivers we're heading to a ridge with lots of volcanic basalt boulders basalt has lots of iron and magnesium over time its surface oxidizes to a dark brown patina which can be chipped off to make pictures follow the sign and start going up after just a few feet within view of the parking lot the petroglyphs are everywhere nearly every rock has at least one the main route is along the crest of the ridge but there are several spur trails like this one when you see all of these you can't help but wonder who made them and why well the area was occupied intermittently from about the year 200 through about 1450 by a people archaeologists now call the jornada mogalon and i'm probably saying that wrong they seem to come and go based on local climate conditions when i first came here they were known as the anastasi as they had been since 1927. that's now an out-of-date pejorative term because in navajo it means ancient enemy there are 11 markers for particularly important petroglyphs like this one this one has a circle like over 10 percent of the glyphs on this site and no i'm not going to show you all the markers i prefer to give you the gift of discovering them for yourself there are a couple of ways to make a petroglyph the fast way is to use one rock to scratch another most of these are made the hard way using two rocks one as a hammer and the other as a chisel and moving them around to make a picture the main trail is pretty steep in spots but the total elevation gain it's only about 150 feet and the glyphs are still everywhere some of them use bumps and rock shapes to make them more realistic here a bump was used to make an eye of a bighorn sheep and here to make the face appear in three dimensions faces and people are frequent subjects the faces tend to be round some have earrings a few may depict hunting scenes and maybe that's why they were made to show status and accomplishments there's lots of glyphs of animals of all type large and small there's even footprints they think this one's a bear perhaps this guy was a farmer there are also lots of geometric shapes that are likely just decorations or art is this proof that prehistoric people just wanted to express themselves just as graffiti artists do today who knows some of the designs are similar to those found on pottery of the same era from the top there's a nice view of the tularosa basin to the east is the range that uplifted during the rifting process most of the basin is to the west as we look at the north end of the missile range it's frequently filled with dust devils after a rough and tricky section on the trail i stopped to chat with some folks they're experienced rvers who love seeing the west except for her she's blind and she just made it up the tricky part with a little help from her friends so why do you do these things i don't want to be bored i tried to interview her but the wind was just too much she said she lost her sight when her son was a teenager and she wanted to show him that there were no obstacles that couldn't be overcome she walked the walk such encounters are the best parts of road trips her love of adventure is infectious and inspiring the shelter is about a mile out it's generally my turnaround point though there are several trails beyond it on hot days it's a nice place to rest and hit your water bottle on the way back since you'll be looking at the other side of the rocks you're going to see different stuff on this trip i missed one of my favorites on the way out and i wanted to make sure i found it on the way back it's one of the more famous and it's marked by number seven it took me a bit of a scramble but i eventually did find it it's the sheep with three arrows it's a pretty obvious record of a hunting scene this is my favorite of the glyphs and i really do want to see it every time i'm here now that i have it's time to head back you can spend as much time here as you want a quick visit can take as little as 90 minutes but two and a half hours is better of course you can spend days here especially if you go glyph hunting in the brush i've seen really good photos from down in there but i suppose that's also where the snakes live i have one fear about doing this video it's that too many people will come here this is a fragile place and it needs to be respected with a little help from the pamphlet map i'm going to take you on my first trip to the village site it begins opposite the main entrance this is the only sign so once again don't bring your dog my channel includes guides to many of north america's biggest prehistoric sites this will be my first small one it's only a five minute walk the first sign is a plea not to damage the site turns out the village was all around us it was first established near the highway about a thousand years ago with simple pit houses which are really just big holes with a roof but this land was very fertile and they got a lot more rain here back then making it easy to grow corn beans and squash and as we've already seen there's plenty of game and fish so the village became prosperous providing its citizens with a rare thing for the age free time lucky for us they used it to make things like petroglyphs and it also enabled them to grow the population which peaked around the year thirteen hundred interestingly this is not long after choco collapsed perhaps due to drought [Music] it appears that this area still had plenty of water because the village sprawled out all the way to here today the area is still largely untouched and let's keep it that way just three rooms have been reconstructed and if you take the right fork this is the first it's an example of the early pit house style as the archaeologists found it but you can just imagine that back in the day this whole area was covered with houses like these the rest of the area remains largely untouched a little further down the trail is one of the more modern homes and had three rooms one for cooking with a pit pantry one for sleeping with a gypsum floor and the other was kind of a living room on the eerier side of things it was tradition back in the day to bury your family under your house and two bodies were found under this one the last ruin shows what happens to adobe over time it returns to earth which is one reason why it takes a trained eye to spot a village like this some of you may be disappointed by the reconstructions no they're not as grand as european cathedrals or or even some of the other pre-american sites in the southwest but for me it's nice to see these in a natural state nearly as they were when they were abandoned in the early 1400s perhaps that drought spread to here no one knows where they went next though a nearby tribe believes that they are descendants well that's three rivers petroglyph site i just love this place mostly because it's unaltered history and full of unknowns the petroglyphs are untouched they're everywhere there's no fences there's something kind of unique about that and even these reconstructions are very simple it's pretty much as they really were when they were found so when you're in the area i highly recommend take the short three-mile detour to the three rivers petroglyph site i don't think you'll be disappointed in this segment we're heading to the eastern edge of the rift from alamogordo it's about a three-hour drive to carlsbad which is our base while visiting two national parks that have been pushed up by the rifting process we'll walk through the huge carlsbad caverns and then head out to the hiking mecca of guadalupe mountains national park they're both on the high eastern edge of the rift overlooking another basin we'll start by touring the largest cave room in north america but there's more we'll do a little hiking and even go off-road from late may through october there's an added evening attraction at the cave a nightly bat flight when thousands of bats leave the cave to feed on insects and i'll help you navigate the tricky reservation system which you need to get into the park being remote they're not very crowded which is rare for national parks these days and this whole road trip is far enough south that you can do it any time of year i shot a lot of this video in december our base is the tourist town of carlsbad new mexico which is less than an hour from both parks we're going to spend the day at the cave first it's just 25 minutes from the center of town there was no lodging and only permit required back country camping in the park so i stayed in one of carlsbad's many hotels but if you want to be closer there is a family resort on the park road the road twists its way up the edge of an old oceanic reef made of sea sponges and other creatures that live long ago in the delaware sea which today is part of the permian basin in this road cut there's a sandstone layer which is evidence of a wind-blown beach the visitor center is 4 406 feet above sea level and about a thousand feet above the basin the visitor center hours vary with the seasons they're 8 to 5 in the winter and you can't enter the cave after 2 30. this is the largest most feature-rich visitor center on the tour the people at the help desk were not only helpful but friendly and use the brochure to point out all the things that there are to do and see which could easily fill a couple of days they also told me about sitting bowl falls which i had never heard of it's about an hour away it looks like a great photo op when i asked about the rift their geologist even agreed to explain the landscape on camera you're free to wander around the visitor center its gift shop in its many displays but to enter the cave you're going to need a couple of things an entry ticket and a reservation ticket stamp with the time of day that you're allowed to enter it you need a reservation ticket for each member of your party and you can get them in advance on the parks website well you should be able to i couldn't because of some sort of a systems error which i'll explain later you get your entry ticket here by showing your park pass or paying fifteen dollars there are two ways to get to the cave the elevators are past the exhibits which are some of the best in the park system there's info about the creatures that lived in the reef back when all this was underwater and of course there's info about the bats this scale diorama is a great way to see the whole system with the visitor center at the top and an elevator bank which goes down 750 feet it also shows the natural entrance which in places is 100 feet wide and 200 feet high it's paved with 60 switchbacks since i always carry equipment i've always taken the elevator assuming that i'd have to hike out those 750 feet if i walked down later the geologist told me that the entrance might be the best part of the whole hike and that everyone can take the elevator back up it's about a mile and a quarter long from the parking lot trailhead to where it joins the big room trail which is also a mile and a quarter long but it's a loop and by the way the seating for the bat flight is at the natural entrance during the day the bats hang out in an area separate from the trail and people aren't allowed in the bat cave if you're a subscriber you know that i try to hide some science in these guides so here goes this cave was formed differently than most most are formed when rain water from above absorbs carbon dioxide on its way down and then it absorbs more carbon dioxide as it filters through the soil forming a mild carbonic acid which dissolves the limestone but this cave was hollowed out by sulfuric acid which pooled from below in the water table and then it dissolved a limestone the presence of gypsum yes the same stuff we walked on in white sands is proof that the whole area is geologically tied together and this cave making process occurred over a wide area there are at least 120 caves nearby and the hollowing out process took quite some time the top of the cave is about 2 million years older than the lower part okay school's over let's go to the elevators there are several but some are out of order because of covet each party gets their own elevator so when they're busy there's likely to be a line and that's why there's a time stamp on the tickets covet rules are going to be flexible when i was there i was required to wear a mask even when i was in the cave this counter doesn't indicate floors it indicates feet it shows you how far you've dropped and when the doors open there was a big surprise i was the only one there it was actually rather eerie i actually called out hello a few times and got no response i was last here in 2008 and the lobby area is much different now back then it was crowded and there was even a diner you can hear my voice well there is a human here god i feel better yes i was happy that a man appeared by its replacement for the good of the cave the diner is now gone a counter with pre-packaged food helmet lights and the t-shirts is 56 degrees fahrenheit year-round and i was wearing a fleece jacket at first it was a bit eerie but then i realized that the emptiness of the cave was an odd gift likely caused by a national park service website mixup in non-coveted times there are special ranger-led tours to chambers that are out of bounds on the self-guided tour but on my visit i was restricted to the mile and a quarter big room trail this trail too is paved and even has railings so you don't wander off in the dark i'd say the lighting is appropriate dim but not too dim and by the way the trail is designed for i've been in a few other caves and the first thing i noticed about this one was well everything's pretty much the same color and it's dry there's no water dripping down or off the walls so these formations aren't growing it's a dead cave okay now that we've seen a little bit of the cave let me tell you the story about the park website a couple of days before i arrived i called the park and asked about ticket availability and covet rules i was told i shouldn't have any problem getting in on my weekend visit but the tickets are only valid for a particular hour on a particular day so i couldn't get my ticket then because i didn't know when i would be there so i waited till the day before to try to buy my ticket when i visited the website it said that no reservation tickets were available for the entire saturday hmm now what to do i was staying in carlsbad so on saturday morning while in my hotel room i checked the website and it said that no tickets were available for the entire weekend i decided to head to the park as early as possible and hope that i could talk my way in or or benefit from a cancellation as we've seen the website was catastrophically wrong and no one at the park knew why the website said there were no tickets available the moral of the story is always call the local number for the park not the toll-free one which is in washington call the local number to get the real story anyway as is typical of caves everything is a bit weird looking what is atypical this room is so big that you never feel closed in even with all the spiky stalactites coming off the ceiling they formed after the water table dropped and left us with big empty spaces it was a long time ago when the local climate was cooler and wetter than now that water seeped through the rock above absorbing minerals and carbon dioxide as it did when the water reached the cave the co2 escaped forming a little bit of a mineral called calcite in each drop when the water evaporated only a tiny bit of calcite remained each formation in here represents billions of drops of water how the water drips dropped and flowed explains why there are so many different types of formation in the cave now we know that stalactites come from above they're hanging on the ceiling stalagmites grow from the bottom up and here they get very big soda straws are kind of hard to pick out but they have holes going through the center where water once flowed through and much of the rocks and the walls look like they're liquefied this is called flowstone it forms when water flows over the surface many of the walls and other features are covered with stuff that looks like popcorn it forms when water evaporates in place instead of dripping or flowing it's also made up of a slightly different mineral which is chemically the same but as a different organization this is the view from caveman junction it's a shortcut that bypasses the far loop which is where i've shot some of my best shots in the cave many of the formations have names this is called the chandelier [Music] this one was on the cover of the dallas morning news travel page [Music] the trail back to the elevators is just as interesting [Music] [Music] [Music] there are more name formations this way this is the rock of ages [Music] the trail then passes the painted corrado on its way back to the main lobby [Music] there were a few people in the lobby when i got back but not many and there was no line for the elevator unlike when i was here in 2008 i spent about an hour and a half maybe two hours down here and a lot of that was spent just taking it all in the trail is only a mile and a quarter long but i did stop several times along the way but if you take the natural entrance the total distance is twice as long even if you don't have to go take the walk to the restroom it's through a small natural winding cave it's quite interesting and many of the 120 nearby caves are quite similar how's this for a cliche when you get to the top and the elevator opens it exits through a gift shop well a smaller one that they call the bookstore i did make a pass through the big gift shop to get another fridge magnet and a sticker for my camera case on the way out i decided to do one of the above ground trails it's short but leads to a nice viewpoint and since this is a reef i looked for fossilized creatures on the ground if they were there i didn't see them and while shooting this landscape i saw a gravel road turns out it's a nine-mile one-way loop it's smooth enough for just about any car and it's a good way to see the vast desert on this old reef so that's carlsbad caverns national park conveniently located near the town of carlsbad where i'd spend one more night before heading to guadalupe mountains national park guadalupe mountains national park is the second park near carlsbad it's actually in texas i only went to it because well i was close to it i had no idea it's a spectacular hiking spot its many summit trails have spectacular views from 3000 feet above two basins it's 30 minutes down the road from carlsbad caverns on the texas border about 50 miles from the town of carlsbad new mexico it's one of the least visited national parks apparently because hikers don't know about it until now it has rugged trails to four the highest peaks in texas but it's a national park because of its unique geology students and researchers from around the world come here to study permian sea creatures and energy bearing geology it's one of the best places in the world to do both it's part of the same 400 mile long reef that makes up carlsbad caverns the reef formed in an inland sea during the time of the supercontinent pangaea much more recently 3000 feet of it was exposed due to uplift during the rifting process which exposed fossils and gave us amazing trails that can be hiked year round it's a large park and you'll need a vehicle to get around it its main visitor center campground and well several trail heads are at pine springs up the road a bit there's frijole ranch which has a small museum and short trails with lots of spring water mckittra canyon's a little farther away and it has day use trails and it's very popular in the fall dog canyon is two hours away it's really remote with just nine camping spots and a few day hikes and if you're a photographer not into hiking well you're really gonna like salt basin dunes it's a mini white sands and hopefully you've seen my segment on that incredible place but this place has something extra seasonal flooding which makes for great photo ops like other parks on the tour there isn't a lodge or even a restaurant here though there are two visitor centers again pine springs is the main one there are just 40 campsites plus the backcountry permit required sites we're going to start our tour at pine springs and it's where the rangers collect the fee issue backcountry permits and answer questions though they didn't want to be on camera it's a great place to learn about the park there are a couple of geology walls and a wildlife display featuring the park's three climate zones desert mountain and riparian which i had to look up and it means places with water meaning the springs and i didn't see any wildlife at all on either of my trips in may or december the geology exhibits feature rocks of the permian basin this is a sample of the limestone that often acts as an impervial cap rock this rock is where oil comes from it's a dolomite of tightly packed sand grains but there's space between each grain and in the permian that space is full of oil or gas it looks and feels solid and incredible pressures are required to get the oil out another wall has samples of rocks from the time of pangaea when this area was under the center lobe of an inland sea called the delaware basin it's a reminder that the earth is constantly changing and of course they have things to buy souvenirs and very little food though but they do have the hiker's favorite mole skin to prevent blisters outside there's a place to sit and info signs that explain why these ordinary looking rocks are anything but it has a view of one of the highest peaks el capitan it's been a landmark for travelers for hundreds of years a nearby trail will take you there throughout our rio grande rift tour we've seen how crustal expansion creates basins and ranges this park has both the trails to the four peaks are obviously in the range but less than an hour away on a road that's an adventure in itself there's a basin that's about two thousand feet lower than the pine springs visitor center at just 3 600 feet mineral rich runoff from the mountains has collected for millions of years hopefully you'll remember from the white sand segment that there's salt and gypsum layers in those mountains thanks to the old permian sea there's no drainage out of the basin so summer heat evaporates the water leaving only a salt flat and gypsum dunes i've seen some amazing photos of it during the seasonal floods and that's the main reason i wanted to come to the park unfortunately it's been closed and i couldn't get a good answer as to why or when it will reopen i've hiked hundreds of miles in the mountains and i've never heard of a trail being closed because of high winds until now the west wind from the mountains often rushes down the ridge at 30 or more miles an hour on this may date [Music] the rangers were concerned about backcountry campers and closed the trails to the highest peaks there's limited cell coverage which makes it hard to distribute a warning so anyway i couldn't go on a big hike this trip being remote and with a base elevation over 5700 feet you would think this would be a great spot to shoot the stars well at times it is but the wind filled the sky with dust even on a moonless night yes i timed the trip that way there were a few stars for good astrophotography there was just too much dust obscuring the stars i've hiked all over the west but never considered hiking here and that was a mistake there's lots of good trails that are easy and there's several rather difficult summit trails like the 8.4 mile guadalupe peak trail that rises about 3000 feet to 8751 feet above sea level the highest point in texas it's rugged with no water and the rangers recommend that you carry at least a gallon in the summer and in the winter it can get a little hairy but this park is a great place to get into summiting because the summits aren't all that high compared to say a fortiner in colorado the park's website has lots of info on its trails and not just the four strenuous peak trails there are several hiking hubs including the pine springs area frijole ranch mckendree canyon and dog canyon the park's website is a great resource at first glance the relatively short devil's hall looks easy ish with just over 500 feet of up it turns out it's tricky requiring good scrambling skills especially after a rain the website even mentions search and rescue procedures so it's not as easy as it looks on paper free holy ranch has a couple of easier trails and some trails for horses there are a couple of springs around here which brings in various types of wildlife the mazanita spring trail is the only wheelchair accessible trail in the park it's only a half a mile out and back and it leads to a pretty pond if you're looking for a little longer trail the smith spring loop trail is a 2.3 mile loop with maples oaks and maybe even a deer or two the mckittrick canyon area is a little farther away it has its own unstaffed visitor center this canyon is very well known for its fall color nine mile nature loop is a great way to explore the chihuahuan desert climate zone then there's the permian reef trail it's an 8.4 mile round trip with over 2000 feet of elevation gain this is a great place for budding geologists as it has markers that are described in a geology guidebook that's available in the pine spring visitor center and if you're a photographer the ridgetop has great views of the canyon another advantage to this park is the uncrowded trails can be hiked year round when i was here in december the weather apart from the wind was great a few weeks later a facebook post showed that the guadalupe peak trail was covered in snow but there's little of that in the spring and fall and that's when the park is busiest so again this is a great place to go hiking especially if you're in great shape and the website will help you explore it since the salt basin dune area was closed i decided to drive to a spot where the el paso highway crosses a small piece of it when i saw that dust devil off to the right i knew i was getting close i braved the winds just long enough to get a few shots humans have come here for generations and a local historical marker says native americans and local hispanics came here for the salt and everything was okay until the 1870s when el paso businessmen fought them for the right to mine the salt in the end the salt was no longer free they had to pay the businessmen well that's my take on this rarely visited national park i've learned it's a fantastic hiking spot for those fit enough to take it on it's also a great place to learn about earth history and if you're a photographer it's a great place to capture landscapes that few others have seen i came here because it's close to carlsbad caverns and the parks of southern new mexico but now i know it's a great year-round destination and we don't have to wait till summer to climb a mountain there are three three hour or so drives back to the rio grande you can go through el paso or you can climb to over 9000 feet and stop at the quaint tourist town of cloudcroft or you can take the long way through roswell i had done the first two so on my last visit it was time to go through roswell and tour its ufo museum aliens apparently are very good for business this dunkin donuts went all in the local mcdonald's is in the shape of a spaceship and there's aliens milling about of course there's souvenir shops but the ufo museum is the big draw because they were working on the floors i got in for just three dollars and weirdly they let me film i even live streamed a 15 minute visit it's still available on my channel there's lots of framed articles on the walls about the famous 1947 event when an alien spacecraft allegedly crashed nearby the air force of course had a different explanation one wall is dedicated to stories about people who claim to have been abducted there's some pretty cool models of some alien spacecraft too there's also a reading room full of books on the 1947 event as well as many other alien encounters [Music] and yes i did go to the gift shop to get another magnet i didn't stay long but it was certainly worth three dollars i can finally say that i've been there and yes it's a little kitschy but these people really believe just seeing how decked out the whole town was in the alien theme was also kind of fun and made the trip worthwhile so far we visited the parks in southern new mexico in this segment we're going to start our drive west and north our first stop is the valley of fires blm area it's about an hour and a half from roswell after starting out flat the road gets interesting as it crosses the sierra block of mountain range where it merges with the sacramento mountains through lincoln county if on your trip you bypass roswell it's just 35 miles north of three rivers the valley of fires plural should not be confused with the valley of fire singular near las vegas this one got its name because of its fiery volcanic origin it's near an historic town that was often visited by billy the kid and pat garrett back when it was an important railroad in mining town and if you have the time i highly recommend that you explore the nearby ghost town of white oaks which is where they made their living four miles west is the youngest lava field in north america between two and five thousand years ago hawaii like lava spewed from at least one vent and flowed for 44 miles in places it's up to 165 feet thick and lucky for us the blm made a recreation area out of a high spot surrounded by all this olivine basalt it has 20 campsites most with rv hookups a nature trail and a small visitor center with trail maps and one less refrigerator magnet all this volcanism is of course a part of the rifting story in the white sand segment we learned that the rifting began 30 plus million years ago a hot plume of magma rose from the mantle and pushed the area up kind of like this rising pumpkin bread eventually the top splits down the middle and later drops but more material is pushed up and out building a mountain range on either side of the rift it looks remarkably like the range we saw at three rivers the drop in the middle made it easier for the lava to reach the surface and that's what it did it flowed over the surface in at least two events for more than two decades i was planning on blazing my own trail in the lava field it's one of the great things about blm sites you can just wander around as you wish and i also saw this little trail on google earth but once i was here on the ground i couldn't find it the scale and randomness of all the rocks was much more challenging than i expected apparently the same was true for the spanish because they named this place malps which i'm sure i'm pronouncing wrong it means badlands or bad footing after i had lunch at one of the picnic tables i decided to take you around the one mile paved malpeas trail to get a good look at all this weird lava it starts near a shelter with a viewpoint and an info sign that tells you where the lava came from it has a steel pipe that points to little black peak which is a barely 100 foot tall cinder cone volcano and weirdly the lava didn't come out of its top it came out of a vent near ground level another sign had a trail map which i managed to shoot but not read for some reason so i went the wrong way around there's also a map on the site's brochure which i was able to download now i'm not going to show you all 14 of the special places you'll have to come here yourself to see them all there's no bad footing on this trail it was designed for wheelchairs with a very gentle slope after the switchbacks the trail hugs the edge of the lava flow by the way the temp on this december day was in the 60s it was windy but quite pleasant the trail heads into the flow at this huge rock pile again you have to be here to understand the scale of it and remember this thing was molten it was incredibly hot it was radiating heat and moving until it bumped against this rise and this caused that once flat surface to tilt it has amazing folds crags and ripples and those ripples have a fancy hawaiian name pohoyhoy from here the trail goes right over the lava field it goes up and down with the contours of the flow we're now approaching trail marker 13. it's near a likely collapsed lava tube hard to really see where the tube was but it's pretty much in that ditch the other side looks a little bit more like a tube part of the broken roof which has been tilted nearly 90 degrees there are intact tubes in this huge field and they could have been used as shelter by early humans life is hard here even for the very hearty juniper tree this one is dead but it's still a part of the ecosystem providing food and shelter for birds and insects as we walk along many of you will think well this is just a big pile of boring black rock well to appreciate it at least once stop and take a good look really think about how it got here it started deep in the mantle and reaching the surface was just the first part of the journey when it first came out of that vent and joined a boiling rock river it took miles for it to flow to here until it finally stopped it's really more amazing than boring when you think about it this live juniper tree is 400 years old and there's lots of yucca to early americans this place was like a home depot the yucca leaves could be weaved into floor mats and bed rolls the wood of course could be burned for heat some of the plants provide seeds that can be eaten and these rocks can be used to grind them into flour if you look at google earth's map the place looks black in barren but when you're here this place is anything but barren the rough surface has so many places for seeds and water and dirt to collect that it's perfect for the right type of plants to find a home eventually their roots along with time will break down all this rock into soil as i was walking along i just had to stop here this is a great example of pahoa hoy that ropey ripley rock with that hawaiian name before we leave the lava field this info sign is an important reminder that there are those who came before us the mescalero apache used to call this area home they were placed on a nearby reservation in the 1870s it took less than 30 minutes to do this trail and i found it very rewarding it's pretty amazing that we can see all of this huge basalt lava field and he can do it without going all the way to hawaii well i hope you enjoyed our little tour of valley of fires it's another great stop in the rift and it's the easiest way to see a huge lava field without going all the way to hawaii we're going to make one more very quick stop before albuquerque because this road provides access to the trinity site which is where the first atomic bomb was tested on the way we're going to climb the west ridge of the tullarusa basin and enter the albuquerque basin there's no white sand or basalt in this one it's very flat and empty pretty much as it was in 1945. you can only get to ground zero as part of an officially sanctioned tour and they only have them a couple of times for year and the tickets are very hard to come by the best and brightest of the united states designed and built the first atomic bombs in los alamos north of albuquerque they chose a desolate site south of this historical marker to test it their work brought an end to world war ii now we're going to head west until we cross the rio grande then we'll go north to albuquerque but not for the city life we're going to a couple of places that i hadn't been to before the trail is a petroglyph national monument and the adobe village at coronado history state park petroglyph national monument is on the edge of a volcanic escarpment where ancestral pueblo people made over 20 000 petroglyphs earlier in the series we went to a blm site called three rivers it's one of my favorite places this is a much more prestigious national monument so it's even bigger but first some background new mexico has a long history of human occupation we've already seen 16 000 year old footprints at white sands and the clovis culture discovered in clovis new mexico goes back 13 000 years and the famous spear points found in folsom new mexico in the northeast part of the state are almost as old starting in the 7th century large settlements were built out of stone in the area that we now call the four corners but by the late 1200s these centers of culture were abandoned and nobody really knows why they think it may have been due to drought and many of the former residents may have walked the 100 plus miles to the rio grande in search of water because around 1300 the population in this area really grew the national monument has five separate locations i went to the visitors center first this guy was the greeter he was the mask police i shot this in december of 2021 it turns out there are no trails here and no petroglyphs but there is a very well-spoken interpretive ranger named david adayavano and he's going to tell us about this place we are at petroglyph national monument we're a national park site here on the west side of albuquerque new mexico and we have uh over 20 000 petroglyphs petrol means rock and glyph is carving so petroglyphs are rock carvings and of course the southwest here is known for petroglyphs and again we have a lot of them the uh all of our petroglyphs are carved into a basalt it's called basalt it's a type of lava rock and we have volcanoes here on the western side of the park we have uh five fischer volcanoes and uh where those fissures were or cracks in the earth is where all the lava rock came out uh a series of flows took place around 200 000 years ago and created this volcanic landscape and of course much much later native people specifically the ancestral pueblo started carving petroglyphs here most of our petroglyphs were carved between 1300 and around 1680 and petroglyphs are not a language as we understand a language they were definitely communicating uh things the ancestral pueblo were definitely using petroglyphs as a form of communication a lot of that communication were uh were spiritual in nature uh and they had uh really deep uh deep held beliefs having to do with volcanoes it was part of their bulk their their origin stories and their belief system and so volcanoes were seen as a sacred place and um it's not by chance that they decided to leave their petroglyphs again many of which are spiritual in nature here in large concentrations even people that live in the southwest often don't know the difference for example between a petroglyph and a pictograph a pictograph is a painting on rock and again petroglyphs are rock carvings and what makes uh what what makes the southwest really known for for petroglyphs is that uh here in the desert environment there's something called a desert varnish it's like a patina that forms on the outside of the rock over a long period of time literally thousands of years the outside of the rock gets dark and in the case of basalt basalt is more natural color is gray but then over time this dark it's almost like a rust quality forms on the outside of the rock but native people determined probably several thousand years ago that if they remove that top surface they get into the lighter more natural gray color of the rock and that's what creates the contrast that's how we're able to see these images so there's no again no paint involved at all and the weathering process will continue and that's a rough way if we can sort of date uh petroglyphs is how how faded they are but that's not an exact science it's certainly not anything to the degree of say carbon dating where you're able to really kind of pinpoint a range so tell me about the different sites there's nothing really at the visitor center right here at the visitor center we have a small gift shop and a film that we uh that we uh show that's uh really from uh it's really kind of made of voices it's from the from contemporary uh pueblo people's perspective on the significance of this site and significance of petroglyphs and then you drive to one of the three petroglyph viewing sites and then on the western side again we have the volcanoes and there's no petroglyphs there but there's about three and a half miles of trail and you're hiking among the uh what are locally known as the three sisters the three largest volcanoes here we have cinder clones and spatter cones uh and uh they are small volcanoes so fisher volcanoes are referred to as monogenic uh volcanoes meaning they're kind of a one-shot deal we believe most of our volcanoes again uh they were active around 200 000 years ago which in geologic terms is actually not very long um and so up here in the high uh dry desert there's a lot of features geologic and volcanic features that are very well preserved so our fisher volcanoes here are associated with the rio grande rift and that's a stretching of the of the surface of the earth that starts in uh southern colorado and then stretches out into texas so it's a big swath of area and that's uh that stretching has created um that stretching of the surface of the earth has put us in closer contact with magma which is usually really deep into the earth it's put us in closer contact with that so it's just there's more susceptibility of that magma coming out and a lot of there is a number of volcanic fields that are like us that are associated with the rio grande rift most of our petroglyphs we believe were carved between 1300 and around 1680. it's considered the pueblo four period so it's really after the story of mesa verde the story of chaco canyon it's kind of the next stage where um pueblo people ancestral pueblo people were liv leaving the four corners area and um and and often connecting with other culturally similar groups that were already here on the rio grande river but they were really developed uh those populations really swelled during starting around 1300 and they were coming from again the four corners area so that's a kind of loose story though because there's more water here well there's lots of reasons uh that uh researchers and archaeologists believe that the uh pueblo ancestral pueblo were leaving the four corners area and uh certainly water is is uh you know is is central to often those theories there's no it's not by chance that of many of the the settlements that ancestral pueblo settled in were along the rio grande here and we think most of our petroglyphs were carved by people that were living in a pueblo that was along the rio grande only a couple of miles from here and they were coming up here for spiritual reasons having to do with the volcanoes they were also hunting and there's a lot of uh depictions of wildlife that they were hunting as well as in some cases specifically hunting scenes that they were depicting in the form of petroglyphs and they were probably also gathering some plants here uh they were also growing corn here they were farmers the ancestral pueblo and in some cases they were growing corn around the escarpment creating little terraces that were catching water and building up soil and then so they were coming here for that purpose as well there's only one area of the monument which is called boca negra the most accessible site that does not allow for pets but pets will if they're not on a leash they'll run off they'll chase uh wildlife you know this is a pretty harsh desert environment we don't really want to add stress to the wildlife here which are really eeking out a survival we have two types of rabbits two types of uh squirrels that live primarily in this what are was called the uh escarpment here this volcanic escarpment which is basically the end of the lava flow and all these little these boulders create little crevices and cracks where those where those uh where those animals with rodents can live and get and hide under but it's a hard you know it's a hard existence so so dogs unfortunately will get all excited and race after them they'll also race up the escarpment after these animals and that creates erosion problems the escarpment is very very susceptible to erosion and we don't want to um create an additional erosion because then eventually the boulders with the petroglyphs on them can actually become unstable and fall over um and then also dogs can get into they can they can be aggressive they can uh scare young people etc the other problem is that the monument is completely entirely filled with coyotes and there's many examples of coyotes um attacking and taking uh pets dogs that are off leash and we've never had it happen with with any animal that's on a leash coyotes generally will avoid people what about their urine well that can also be a problem they'll get into they'll start digging after an animal they're they will they could urinate and then that could throw off some wildlife but it's more the you know digging and chasing animals that's a real issue for us uh the three petroglyph viewing sites are all a little different um but uh they're all they all have very good petroglyphs and um i don't know if you want me to go into the specifics of the different sites but uh no i'll take it from here bocanegra is just a couple of miles up the road and dogs are not allowed at this one and while we drive there i should probably tell you that well you should do what i didn't do that is go to the park's website i've been to over half the national parks and i still don't do this enough it's a great way to learn about the park it's trails and it's hours of operation it's there that i learned that this is the easiest place to see petroglyphs there are several near the trailhead it takes about an hour to hike all three of the connecting trails and you'll see about 100 petroglyphs along the way the park closes at 4 30 so plan accordingly and one more thing the trail of the escarpment is steep and rough it may be too much for some people that's all i'm going to show you of the trail because well i don't want to ruin it for you but remember if you don't have much time this is the easiest and fastest place to see petroglyphs we're now going to go to piedras marchetas canyon it's about four miles from here and six and a half miles from the visitor center dogs are allowed on a leash as long as it's only six feet long there are about 400 petroglyphs around the trails here including the famous rock with all the hands the first glyphs are about a quarter mile down the trail which is a mile and a half round trip and once again i don't want to show you everything but here's a few examples of what you'll see now we're going to the rind kanata canyon site it's the closest to the visitor center but it's where the glyphs are farthest away from the trailhead the trail is a 2.2 mile sandy loop in a little valley and you never have to climb the escarpment after several minutes of walking on hard packed sand i still hadn't seen any glyphs if i had been to the website i would have known that the first of about 300 are three quarters of a mile down the trail near the boxed end of the canyon here's some of what you'll see this is a popular spot for locals and it has the longest hours the gate is open from sunrise to sunset by the way there is water at the visitor center and it can get really hot here but there is no water at any of the trail sites and by the way the elevation is about a mile high at 5200 feet now that we've seen the three petroglyph sites it's time to go to the volcano site as the crow flies it's close to the visitor center but it's about a 12 mile or 20 minute drive to get there the gate is open from nine to five there are several connecting trails that total about three and a half miles i'd advise picking up a map at the visitor center to plot a short stroll or up to a three and a half mile hike but if you didn't do that at least take a look at the sign near the trailhead this is a vast treeless area and by law bicycles are not allowed and you must stay on the trail again dogs must be on a leash and kept at least eight feet away from rattlesnakes which sounds like good advice for us all well that's petroglyphs national monument it's really four parks in one to me petroglyphs are little time capsules that really make you think about the people who carved each one with another rock why did they do it to show the world what they hunted or what they looked like or simply to let everyone know that they were there we'll never know exactly what they were trying to communicate but that's a big part of the fun of a place like this now we're going to a nearby place where some of those who carved the petroglyphs likely lived it's a state park and unlike a national monument it's legal to fly over it it's called coronado historic site which is weird because its main feature is the ruins of a pueblo of the tiwa people pueblo people and the spanish play a significant role in new mexico history and at this place you can learn about both it's located near highway 550 north of albuquerque ancestral pueblo people have been living in the area for thousands of years in about 1300 they started building here perhaps due to an influx of new residents who migrated here from what we now call the four corners area they call themselves the tiwa they were prosperous farmers and hunters when francisco coronado came through in 1540. he was looking for the seven cities of gold and the fame that cortes had received after conquering mexico just a few years earlier this place is much bigger than the village we saw in episode 2. this one had about 1200 rooms enough to impress the spanish there were three plazas and several ceremonial kivas it was later named after the tiwa word for evergreen and sorry if i butchered that pronunciation the site became new mexico's first state park in 1935. an excavation of the 10-acre site started that same year as you can see from this sketch of the excavation there's much more to it than what we see above ground today most of the structures were re-buried after the excavation to protect them only one of the three plazas is visible today the visitor center also has a number of exhibits about the tiwa coronado and the pueblo revolt of 1680. this was an important event in new mexico history especially for the native americans and i wish i knew more about it there are also displays in front of the visitor center and a few picnic tables with a great view of the rio grande the tiwa planted crops in the river bottom below out back there's a paved trail that loops past the reconstructed rooms there's info signs along the way to tell you about the tiwa people this square kiva was designed to look like the one they found the murals in today they're preserved in the visitor center but no one is allowed to photograph them in this givea you can actually enter but only with one of the park's guides most of the kivas i've seen at other sites in the southwest have been round and they had some round ones here too so why is such an historic native american site named after coronado a spanish conquistador well a sign of the trail kind of has the answer it's because when the park was established the archaeologists thought that coronado had stayed there and that was good enough for them to name it after him they had no proof until the last few years when a large archaeological metal detector survey found parts of a crossbow nails and pieces of chainmail they believe that this is evidence of a battle the place was abandoned in the late 1600s perhaps because of a 20-year drought or maybe that revolt had something to do with it residents likely moved to one of the nearby pueblos of santa ana or sandia as they claim their ancestors came from here i've been to quite a few prehistoric native sites and this is the first one i've seen where adobe was used adobe tends to turn back into soil in this part of the site near where the east plaza was has been reconstructed to look as it did in the eighteen hundreds the real buildings or at least their foundations are still buried beneath there's a seven dollar entry fee and the hours are limited that closes around 4 30 and they're closed on tuesday and all this information of course is available on the park's website and yes ironically that is an indian casino in the background it only takes about an hour to see the coronado history site if you're doing the whole rio grande riff road trip or if you just happen to be in albuquerque this place is well worth the visit it's one of the few places you can learn about both the pueblo people and their first contact with the spanish which of course wasn't always pleasant coronado didn't stay long because he didn't find any gold he went back to mexico in 1542 40 years later the spanish were back they forced the pueblo people that happens to be on our way to our next stop to convert to their religion and in 1621 to build the jemez mission it's one of the oldest churches in north america it's located on a nice driving road that goes through the quaint and tourist friendly jimez pueblo it's a nice little surprise as we near the end of our road trip welcome back this is part six and the last segment of our new mexico road trip through the rio grande rift we're going to pick up where we left off at the james historic site we'll wind our way to a super volcano before visiting bandolier national monument then we'll head north to see where new mexico is splitting apart before our last stop in a field of volcanoes we'll even climb one we'll go through santa fe and tahoe's along the way our first stop is 30 minutes up a winding road to a super volcano well it's crater which is called a caldera it's smaller than the yellowstone super volcano but still the valley's caldera is over 13 miles across it's so big that when you're next to it it looks nothing like a volcano and guess what we're driving on it it covers 89 000 acres and that clearing is just a small part of it those mountains aren't the edge either they're younger volcanic domes near the center of the caldera and one is over 11 000 feet tall you need a little help from google just see just how big this place is and by the way it's one of our youngest national preserves this is the view from the valley's grand pullout on highway 4. it's one of several meadows and its elevation is about 8 000 feet and this is really what you're gonna see at this park it's mostly undeveloped with a few hiking and biking trails and lots of wildlife viewing there's even bears the valets or meadows are remarkably peaceful but 1.6 million years ago that wasn't the case that's when a bunch of smaller volcanoes combined to form one super one resulting in an eruption that spewed 75 square miles of ash and molten rock if you're old enough to remember the mount st helen's eruption it spewed out less than a half a cubic mile of material so this thing really was super in places several hundred feet of ash cooled to become the perfect material to make cliff dwellings volcanoes can form obsidian and starting about 11 000 years ago man found it here and started using it to make arrow points and knives the park service even made a trail to one of the obsidian pit mines i had to save the hike for next time because i was due at the cliff dwellings at bandolier it's about a 45-minute drive but i decided to go through santa fe which added an hour to the trip i hadn't seen santa fe in a while and boy has it grown even in the off season it was crowded and expensive in the historic part of town it seems every building is a gallery of some sort which of course is one of the main attractions after a quick lunch stop i continued on my way to bandolier national monument it's a pleasant drive to the main gate in the off season the park road is open from dusk to dawn in december the gate wasn't even manned during the busy season which varies personal cars are only allowed in in the early morning and late afternoon to reduce traffic and overcrowding you gotta check with the park's website for details because the dates in which they do this varies in the busy season during the rest of the day you have to take a shuttle bus into the park in at least from a visitor center near the town of white rock which is several miles away the park road starts on pajarojito plateau and not far from the gate there's a nice view of frijole canyon which is where the cliff dwellings are there's a short walk to the viewpoint where there's even a couple of spotting scopes and one is designed for those in wheelchairs one of the info signs describes the volcanic landscape the other one talks about how forest fires create diverse habitat which is a good thing the visitor center and cliff dwellings are on the valley floor at the far end of the canyon the three mile drive to the gate to the visitor center is a pretty one and by the way pets are allowed only in the visitor center parking lot and not on any of the trails the elevation at the visitor center is almost 6 100 feet and if you're a flat lander you may feel the altitude and the effects of altitude are even greater in the summer on a 90 degree day the air density is equivalent to being at about 9000 feet and of course the air is also very dry so if the altitude doesn't get you be sure to drink enough water to avoid dehydration there was plenty of parking when i arrived in the 1930s and 40s there was lodging here but not anymore now there's just a store and a cafe where they serve snacks during the busy times this is where the shuttle will drop you off and there are rangers here to answer questions and to hand out the helpful brochures and maps which i highly recommend you pick up there are over 70 miles of trails here i'm just going to do the 1.4 mile pueblo loop trail to the cliff dwellings it begins behind this building the trail is not an ada approved path but it is paved and if you don't feel like walking there's another free spotting scope again one is at wheelchair height there's archaeological sites all over the place and you're walking past them but most of them have been left alone and are out of sight the highest concentration is about a half mile down this trail in addition to the park map i picked up one of the trail guide books for a couple of bucks it has info on the 21 markers along the way the trail starts pretty straight and flat in this little valley it's going to take a few minutes to get to the cliffs and take the time to wonder what it might have been like to live back then you're walking where they walked in what was then quite a big settlement 700 years ago i'm not going to talk about all the markers but the first one is for a side trail it crosses for hole creek which was the original year-round water source on the other side of that bridge there are trails to a waterfall and to the back country this is the first ruin if you've seen the previous segments of this road trip you know that it's a kiva which was used for ceremonies it had a roof back in the day and may have looked something like this fully restored one in aztec new mexico that i shot a few years ago kivas were used for religious rights and it's where important decisions were made this one was excavated in the 1930s and only partially reconstructed by 1200 a.d the ancestral pueblo were growing crops in this valley and wherever else they could for example they made a staircase to the top of the valley where they also grew crops they planted corn beans and squash with the help of terraces and other irrigation methods to capture and retain water they grew plenty of food for the hundreds of people who lived here they also hunted the game in the area and they raised turkeys they wove the feathers to make blankets and other household items and of course they ate them too the turkeys not the feathers this is a small section of the ancestral pueblo village called kawani it is one of several villages in the park but of course only a small fraction of them have been excavated and reconstructed some of the buildings had two and even three stories in all there were about 400 rooms that housed just 100 people the guidebook includes an illustration of what it might have looked like back in the day most of the ground floors were used for grain storage because they were smart enough to know that they needed reserves as insurance in case a harvest failed the turkeys were also housed on the first floor the rooms were all connected in a protective circle which probably means there was a threat of some sort there was a plaza in the center with several kivas there was an opening at only one end in this part of the trail well once again we're walking where they would have walked this would have been on the outer edge of the plaza the design and construction indicate that the builders likely had contact with other settlements including chaco canyon and mesa verde even back then they had extensive trade networks obsidian from the caldera has been found as far away as the northern plains and feathers and the remains of macaws have been found here and they had to come all the way from mexico and of course they didn't have horses back then they had to walk these great distances at the coronado site we saw how they used adobe and mud bricks to build structures here they used rock they cut blocks from the soft volcanic tuff and here the reconstructors use maybe a little too much mortar but you get the basic idea of how it looked back in the day the reconstructions were done by the civilian conservation corps during the depression in the 1930s that was a government jobs program and unlike today when the government gives you money when you're not working back then the greatest generation had to do things like build walls to get money from the government i suppose that's rather appalling if you're 20 something at trail marker 9 there's a fork the trail to the left bypasses some of the cliff dwellings for those who want to avoid climbing up a few steps or for those who just want to take a shortcut to longhouse ruin and eventually alcove house longhouse is several stories tall these holes were used to anchor timber beams that acted as a floor or ceiling for the higher stories there's also a pictograph nearby which is a painted picture on rock and a few petroglyphs which are harder to see petroglyphs are carved into the rock but they're not painted the rock here lacks the desert varnish that we saw at three rivers and the other sites on the trip so here they're harder to see if you want to go to alcove house that's going to add another mile to the hike and with the help of ladders the trail rises over 140 feet and you'll get a nice photo up there but it's a tricky and potentially dangerous climb in march of 2022 a woman was climbing a ladder and was hit by a falling rock she fell 25 feet and died due to her injuries the trail was closed for several weeks to try to figure out what happened okay back to the fork the right path goes up a bit and heads to the cliff face and it's too bad there were high thin clouds they really muted the colors of the rock trees and sky it's much more vibrant on a clear sunny day when you're near the cliff face you can see how easy the rock erodes remember it's compressed volcanic ash that came out of that caldera we saw earlier it's called tough which is odd because it's actually very soft and rain and wind eroded away the darker areas are more eroded than the lighter ones in the really dark areas they're holes or pockets the beginning of caves about 800 years ago someone had the idea to use stone tools to enlarge those pockets into places big enough to live in and eventually there were hundreds of rooms here at the switchback i took a good look at the tough you can see individual grains of ash as well as clumps of it they say the ash was still hot when it fell here and that heat along with the pressure from several hundred feet of the stuff converted it into a loosely connected rock the stairs take us up another 40 feet or so and once you get around the corner there's a nice view of the village which is about 70 feet below us now [Music] the trail continues around what looks like an addition to make the cave bigger again they use timbers for the roof and the floor beams and those timbers helped date the age of the dwellings without them it would have been very difficult to see exactly when they were built and the dwellings seem to be everywhere but to protect them you're only allowed to enter the ones that have ladders like this one climbing the ladder with a mirrorless camera on a big old gimbal wasn't too hard but i wanted to get up here and show you the smoke stains on the ceiling that must mean they had quite a few fires in here probably for cooking and maybe also for heat it does get colder in the winter to me this spot is the highlight of bandolier perhaps because of the impression it made on me the first time i was here in 2000 before that pueblos and cliff dwellings were only things that i was forced to read about in school back then the book said that the anasazi lived here and that is no longer a politically correct term because it means ancient enemy in navajo so today they're known as the ancestral pueblo but anyway let's get back to my story this place was the seed that compelled me to visit more places like this all over the southwest and even the large mound builders sites at cahokia in illinois it all started on this short paved trail in bandolier national monument the trail continues to longhouse and the pictograph before heading to alcove house so for me this was the turnaround point it was time to head on back down the road it takes about 90 minutes to drive to the rio grande gorge bridge i had to hustle to get there before sunset a good bit of the drive is through the mountains and it's pretty high i think i got to about 9 000 feet at one pass eventually it gets very flat at about 6 400 feet i pulled into the parking lot just about 15 minutes before sunset the locals were already packing up their tables full of souvenirs so i wouldn't be doing any shopping i got the drone up as soon as i could to catch the light the bridge is almost 900 feet above the river it's from here that new mexico is spreading apart gps data shows that the size of the gorge are still moving apart every year only by a few millimeters but it is measurable this tectonic activity has been going on for a long time and it's at least partially responsible for everything we've seen on this 800 mile-ish road trip from the beautiful white sands of the telerusa basin to the guadalupe mountains the big cave the lava flows petroglyphs and even the cave dwellings this huge crack in the earth is a reminder of the power of nature in our ability to adapt to it like most stops on this trip i wish i had more time to spend here the trails along the cliff edge looked particularly inviting but now we're heading to our last stop of the road trip the plan is to be on top of a volcano at dawn we'll cross one last range pushed up by the rift and drive through the ski resort town of tahoes for a total of two and a half hours through the mountains to our next hotel [Music] morning came very early there was no need for a wake-up call because the guy next door was warming up his diesel pickup truck at 5 30 in the morning i planned on an early start anyway so i was off to capulin volcano national monument because the website said it was open at sunrise but websites can be wrong when i got here i found the gate for the road to the top doesn't open until 8. so i had plenty of time to shoot the surrounding landscape which is quite pretty and reminds me a little bit of montana except for these basalt cliffs i drove far enough away from the park's property that i was able to legally fly the drone capulin is a typical thousand foot high cinder cone volcano it's in the eastern most volcanic field in north america and it formed about 60 000 years ago and what's really cool is there's a road to the top after a brief stop at the visitor center i headed up the pave road which just about circles around the cone to a parking lot near the very top the views of the surrounding landscape they're pretty and they show that we're definitely in a volcanic field there are several volcanoes cones and vents all over the place especially if you look to the southwest there's a trail to the top and from there you can see a very large shield volcano sierra grande it was the source of much of the basalt flows like these early cattle drivers used some of them as natural corrals in the mid-1800s and the history of the place doesn't stop there the old santa fe trail came through here the volcanoes were excellent guideposts and if you don't like heights there's also a short trail to the bottom of the crater but for me the early morning view from the top is the best it's a great place to wrap up our tour of the parks of new mexico's rio grande rift if you're a fan of national parks you know that many of our western parks are overcrowded and even difficult to get into but that's not the case here making now the perfect time to visit new mexico before its parks are discovered and become overcrowded too for now these national parks are some of the least visited in the country and on this road trip we've seen how beautiful they all are in very different ways we've seen how natives live sustainably in this harsh environment using what nature provided to create homes and to leave their mark and we've had a glimpse of how europeans began to change that we've seen how the earth itself is changing opening fissures and filling them with lava flows and in some places a super volcano and its smaller cousins we've seen them all on the uncrowded roads of new mexico along a giant crack in the earth you probably didn't even know was there but it helped create everything that we've seen as we toured the parks of new mexico's rio grande rift [Music] it took me two six-day trips one a and one in december to shoot this video and hundreds of hours to write it and edit it so please push the like button and subscribe to my channel that is dedicated to helping you explore the west

Channel: The West is Big! Travel

Views: 149,102

Keywords: new mexico, road trip, white sands, national park, white sands national park, carlsbad caverns, guadalupe mountains, hiking, highest point in texas, day hikes, new mexico road trip, space museum, alamogordo, 3 rivers petroglyph, petroglyph site, pueblo, trinity site, coronado history park, national monument, new mexico parks, valles caldera, cliff dwellings, rio grande gorge bridge, bandelier, rving, camping, blm camping, best new mexico places, santa fe new mexico

Id: VyhZoebuFDw

Length: 108min 18sec (6498 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022