New Mexico the Land of Enchantment
We went to New Mexico twice each time started from and ended at Albuquerque: this spring to south and east, and a few years ago summer to north and west from Albuquerque -> Petroglyph National Monument -> Acoma Pueblo -> Lava Beds -> Church Rock -> Four Corners -> Aztec Ruins -> Taos -> Santa Fe -> Albuquerque. New Mexico’s different architecture, Indian and Mexican infusion culture, and its mostly flat land with spotty butts’ landscape were quite interesting.
The south and east route Albuquerque -> Santa Rosa -> Roswell -> Carlsbad -> Alamogordo -> Las Cruces -> Albuquerque route, we thought we would get away from Minnesota snow in March when we went to New Mexico during the spring break, but to our surprise it snowed twice there during that week. Even people lived there told us snow like this was quite unusual. On this trip, we had the luxury to visit my husband’s rock-climbing and caving friend from 40 years ago. He moved to Albuquerque two years ago. He and his wife have a very nice house with a good view. We spent a couple of nights there and had a good time talking and hiking.
Santa Rosa’s Blue Hole was a must-see. A car museum by the road was unexpected. Fort Sumner’s Billy the Kid Museum and Billy the Kid Grave were interesting to see. Then we headed to UFO town Roswell.
Roswell is famous for its 1947 UFO event. Even though UFO Museum was interesting to see, but I liked the Bottomless Lake State Park there the best. There are at least five lakes in that park, there are paths get you close to the edge of the lakes and some of them you can even walk around the lake.
Carlsbad Caverns is world famous and it’s a must-see. Good thing we checked national parks’ website before we went. To visit the Caverns, you need to make a reservation ahead of time through their website to select a timeslot for arrival. Because our reservation time was 1:30pm in the afternoon, on the way to Carlsbad Caverns we went to see Sitting Bull Falls first. We took the Carlsbad self-guided tour where elevator took us directly down to the cave. The trail in the cave was about 1.5 miles. Can you spot the lion’s tail in the cave pictures I posted below? Carlsbad also has a natural entrance. It’s where bats gather. They usually come in June/July. We did not see any bat when we were there in March. The natural entrance is huge, magnificent to see even though the walk down to the entrance was long.
White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo is another must-see. The world’s largest gypsum dunefield over the Chihuahuan Desert is 275 square miles, it’s so amazing to drive on the vast field and walk on the sands. As you can see it happened to snowed at night so when we went to White Sands in the morning, the snow was whiter than sands. But still very beautiful.
Alamogordo is a city built narrow in width but stretched long along mountains foot. We liked Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks National Monument. It’s worthwhile to hike there, the shapes of the rocks were unique and a cloudy day made this place somewhat mysterious.
Here are some other interesting things we saw on this trip such as living desert zoo and Pueblo Missions ruins. It looks this blog is getting long, I’ll write about our New Mexico north and west route at another blog.
