We left off on Day 4 in White Rock, but I have a few editorial comments before I continue with the recap.
I was reading through some old trip recaps, and I realized that Louie and I HAD spent a night in Oklahoma before: evidently we stayed a night in Tulsa on our trip home from New Mexico on a previous trip. Now, obviously it was uneventful as I have no recollection of it, but I thought it was worth mentioning for total accuracy reasons.
And my brother did a little research on Boise City, Oklahoma, and learned that it was inadvertently bombed during WW2, in 1943, by friendly fire. Watch this video if you are interested in learning more! What a crazy story!
So that brings us to White Rock, New Mexico on Day 4 of the trip.
We slept well in the Yurt, and woke up early. We weren’t sure how crowded Bandelier National Monument would get, but it’s always a good idea to try to beat the crowds. We were among the first in the parking lot (yes!) and got loaded up to hike into Frijoles Canyon, the most popular part of the park.
It was really nice to have the place basically to ourselves for awhile. It was a beautiful day, and the views were terrific.
The Native Americans built various buildings into the side of the mountains, tucked into alcoves, down low and up high. There are lots of parts of the buildings left to see, as well as ladders to climb (that the park service added in for us to climb, but likely was a way that the ancestral pueblo people got around.)
As always on these trips, there is tons to learn and forget. We read signs about history, about plants and animals, rocks and other geology, climate, etc, and then promptly forgot most of it.
After seeing the buildings on the Pueblo Loop in Frijoles Canyon, we headed to Alcove House, which is 140 feet up up the cliff, and involved climbing several long ladders. I started up and then decided it wasn’t for me, so I waited down below while Louie went up to see Alcove House.
Another reason I had wanted to go to Bandelier was because there is a trail called the Frey Trail. As it turns out, the trail goes from the campground to the park, and isn’t much to bother with unless you are staying in the campground, which we weren’t. (It didn’t take reservations and I prefer to have everything planned out so we don’t have to stress.)
But we passed by where it ended, and who doesn’t love a trail with their name on it?
Anyway, Louie enjoyed the Alcove House, and then we hiked back to the visitor’s center. There were plenty of signs along the way to learn, and then forget, though I did learned about Gambel Oaks, which helped me identify them throughout the entire trip!
We had a quick snack and bathroom break, and had to decide what to do next. We enjoyed a cup of coffee and some cake at the cafe, and then headed out on the Falls Trail, which was supposed the next most popular thing to do after Frijoles Canyon. It was a cool hike, but the weather wasn’t quite as nice and kept lightly raining on us. It was getting hot though, so it was probably for the best.
The trail might have continued further at other times but we got to a place where it was closed off, so we headed back.
After that hike, we decided it was time to go. We stopped by the campground on our way out to see the other end of the Frey Trail.
We even hiked in a little ways, and saw a woodpecker right up close. Louie had left his camera in the car, so he was upset that the one time he didn’t have it, we saw a woodpecker right there!
It was only about mid-afternoon at this point, so we decided to go check out nearby Los Alamos. It’s a weird place out there, lots of restricted areas owned by the Department of Energy, probably housing nuclear weapons but nobody would know (unless you visit mar-a-lago, I suppose?). There’s a National Historical Park in Los Alamos, but it was closed, but there is some stuff to see. We went to the Bradbury Science Museum and learned a lot, but what I didn’t like was that I felt the bomb was glorified and I wanted to see a more nuanced approach: hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, and our country did it, and maybe it ended the war but maybe the war was already ending and we didn’t need to kill all those people. So I found being there very upsetting, but Louie enjoyed some of the science stuff, so it was a mixed day for us.
We ate dinner at a Mexican place called El Rigoberto’s in White Rock, and then enjoyed hearing the rain on the yurt as we went to sleep that night. I will say this: White Rock was a nice base for Bandelier, but there aren’t very many restaurant options. There is a good sized grocery store and plenty of gas stations.
Day 5: We woke up and decided to eat breakfast at the Fig and Pig before headed out of town. It was tasty, though oddly busy with a large group of people. We had a 4 1/2 hour drive to Mesa Verde on the docket for this day, and there were a few options as to how to go. We decided to take the route that would head north into Colorado first and then west. We were eager to see some “real” mountains!
The drive was gorgeous, and went through a variety of small towns, like Abiquiu and Tierra Amarilla. We stopped for lunch in Pagosa Springs, which has hot springs and a lovely river through it: we walked around a bit and then had a picnic by the river. (Interesting fact to me: we camped in Pagosa Springs when I was a kid, according to my journal.)
After lunch we continued along, and finally made it to Mesa Verde around 3:30, just before the visitor’s center closed, so we had a quick look at the exhibits before checking into our campground. (Also where we camped when I was a kid: even the campground map was similar, nothing really had changed in over 30 years in that sense.)
Campground check in was excruciatingly slow, but we finally made it, and then we had to go pick out our own campsite. I found this stressful, but it wasn’t too busy yet and we drove around trying to figure out what the best option was: there were just a few tent only loops and that is what we chose from. We eventually picked one with a decent view, good privacy, and relatively close but not too close to the bathrooms.
After we set up the camp first (and this picture is from during meal prep, as obviously otherwise we would have everything in the bear box, which is conveniently and scarily location immediately next to the tent, in order to attract the bear to where we are), then we had time for a short hike from the campground. We headed out for a 2 mile hike on the Knife Edge Trail.
After our hike, we made a fire and our first camping dinner of the trip. (Mac and cheese with tuna and canned peas, yummy!).
One constant of the trip was that the days were warm/hot enough, but as soon as the sun went down it got cold. We thought Mesa Verde would be the coldest, but we were incorrect. However, the sky was the darkest! In the middle of the night I needed to get up to go to the bathroom and I was blown away by the night sky. There were stars upon stars, the milky way, distant universes, who even knows. So many stars that normally you can’t see because of the background lights around you.
Day 6: This morning would start with a tour of Cliff Palace. Several of the cliff dwellings could only be seen with a ranger led tour, which nowadays you have to reserve online, two weeks in advance. But it turned out that during the time we were visiting Cliff Palace was the only one that you could do! It’s too bad, because I was really wanting to try Balcony House again: we had gone when I was a kid and I remember it was scary but really fascinating. However, Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling and I was pleased to secure a time. We ended up arriving too early, of course, because they said to allow an hour from the campground but it didn’t actually take that long. There wasn’t too much to see in the area so we just wandered around and waited for our turn.
The tour has a few scary moments but mostly it’s not bad, and the structure is amazing to see, that it was built when it was built, that it is still standing as much as it is, and that we can see it. It’s all just amazing.
The ranger led a terrific tour and we learned quite a lot about the people who built these houses. One interesting fact was that the people building at Mesa Verde weren’t doing anything particularly unique for the time: these sorts of houses were being built all over at this time, it’s simply that the ones in Mesa Verde have lasted longer over the years. It’s quite fascinating that all of sudden, everybody was building homes the same, as if they saw it on instagram, but it was likely due to trade.
In any case, we got to get up close and personal with the site, and then we climbed a couple of ladders to get out and that was a little scary but I managed.
After Cliff Palace, we had more to see. Unfortunately Wetherill Mesa was closed during this time (construction) but the rest of the part was open. We stopped at all the places, and took pictures and walked around and read stuff and promptly forgot most of it, as usual.
Interesting side bar: my old trip diary said we went to Wetherill Mesa and rode a train. Also we stayed at the campground and it was cold in the morning.
At the Spruce Tree House area, we decided to do a longer hike, the Petroglyph Point Trail. It used to be that you could go inside the Spruce Tree House, but it isn’t currently open to guests.
Petroglyph Point Trail was only 2.3 miles, but it was a lot of challenge, things to squeeze through, step over, lots of ups and downs. We ended up being able to see a cliff dwelling, not in fantastic shape, but one that was out away from the crowds so that was cool.
And then there was the petroglyph panel, which I did not seem to get a really good picture of. It was a little crazy when we got there with an odd amount of people and I must have gotten overwhelmed.
The rest of the hike wasn’t as interesting–there was a place where you had to climb over a couple of huge rocks that was pretty scary/difficulty, but obviously I managed. And we just kept hiking and finally got back to the visitor’s center/area where the hike started. At this point I was pretty tired but we forged ahead with more sightseeing.
Around 6 pm or so we headed back to the camp: we wanted to shower before dinner, so we did that and then enjoyed some Indian food packets from Trader Joe’s while sitting by the fire.
Day 7: We had to pack up in the morning, so we did that first, and then headed out for one more hike before leaving Mesa Verde. We wanted to hike the Point Lookout Trail, which left from the campground, and was 2.2 miles with 400 feet elevation change–doesn’t sound too hard, but it started climbing right away. Good morning to me! The hike was straightforward at least: up to the view, back down. The view was terrific!
We loved seeing Mesa Verde, but we were even more excited about getting closer to those snow capped mountains in the distance. To be fair, we didn’t know if we were going to those mountains or other mountains, but we knew that our next few stops were closer to similar mountains.
That’s where I will stop for this post. We were leaving the Cliff Dwellings portion of the trip and heading into the mountains. Next: the Million Dollar Highway and Ouray awaits!
