Fascinating Nature: American South-West in a Winter Robe

I have traveled many times through the American South-West, but this last trip was my first winter trip to the region.

To my great surprise, winter appears to be a great time to visit the South-West, possibly better than any other season. The key reason behind that is that tourists seem not to like cold weather and, subsequently, there were hardly any of them in most places we visited (with a small but notable exception of Grand Canyon, which is popular year-round).

The lack of tourists translates to a better overall experience, as witnessing the beauty and splendor of the South-West in solitude is bound to enhance your appreciation of the forces that stand behind the creation of this world's most amazing natural wonder.

Solitude encourages contemplation, introspection, as well as it enhances senses and brings closer the examiner and the subject of examination. In my case, it also led to a realization that American South-West is a Playground of Nature, a place where Nature experimented with all possible rock shapes and forms, before deciding how the rest of Earth should look like.

My second big realization was that this Nature's Playground is My Playground too. I've been very fortunate to be able to travel multiple times through South-West, with time getting to know it as well as my own backyard. This growing intimate knowledge of the region allows me to probe it further and deeper with each subsequent visit, leading to even deeper fascination and admiration for the Nature and its ways.

During the next few weeks I'm going to blog about my favorite places in the South-West, and the way they look during winter.

Here's a list of places I'll rave about:

1. Valley of Fire State Park
2. Monument Valley Tribal Park
3. Gooseneck State Park
4. Valley of Gods
5. Canyonlands National Park, The Needless Area
6. Newspaper Rock State Park
7. Arches National Park
8. Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky Area
9. Dead Horse Point State Park
10. Goblin Valley State Park
11. Colorado National Monument
12. Hovenweep National Monument
13. Valley of the Ancients National Monument
14. Mesa Verde National Park
15. Aztec National Monument
16. Chaco Culture National Historic Park
17. Grand Canyon National Park, South Rim
18. Rainbow Bridge National Monument
19. Vermillion Cliffs National Monument
20. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
21. Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness
22. Bryce National Park
23. Kodachrome State Park
24. Pink Sand Dunes State Park
25. Zion National Park

Honeymoon Road Trip

I'm very happy and proud to report that I finally managed to finish all posts describing our honeymoon adventures!

Below they are listed in the chronological order:

1. Honeymoon
   
2. Honeymoon Overview
   
3. Death Valley NP - Darwin Falls Hike
   
4. Death Valley NP - Mosaic Canyon Hike
   
5. Death Valley NP - Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
   
6. Death Valley NP - Devil's Golfcourse
   
7. Death Valley NP - Zabriskie Point
   
8. Death Valley NP - Dante's View
   
9. Death Valley NP - Artist's Drive and Palette
   
10. Death Valley NP - Badwater Basin
    
11. Snow in Death Valley
    
12. Grand Canyon NP - Grandview Trail
    
13. "For the record, I am dying..." - Hiking on the Grandview Trail in Grand Canyon
    
14. Grand Canyon NP - Viewpoints
    
15. Petrified Forrest NP - Giant Logs Trail
    
16. Petrified Forrest NP - Crystal Forest
    
17. Petrified Forrest NP - Newspaper Rock
    
18. Petrified Forrest NP - Painted Desert
    
19. Route 66
    
20. On the Way to Chaco Canyon NM
    
21. Rio Grande Overlook
    
22. Bandalier NM
    
23. Los Alamos - Bradbury Science Museum
    
24. Kasha-Katuwe NM
    
25. Great Sand Dunes NP - The High Dune Hike
    
26. Great Sand Dunes NP - Dunes Overlook + Medano Creek Hike
    
27. Great Sand Dunes NP - Sunset
    
28. Zapata Falls
    
29. City of Taos and Taos Pueblo
    
30. Santa Fe
    
31. El Santuario de Chimayo
    
32. Roswell - Extraterrestrial Hwy 285 and the City
    
33. Roswell - International UFO Museum and Research Center
    
34. Carlsbad Caverns NP - The Natural Entrance and the Big Room
    
35. Carlsbad Caverns NP - King's Palace
    
36. Carlsbad Caverns NP - Bat Flight Program
    
37. Carlsbad Caverns NP - Desert
    
38. Guadalupe Mountains NP - McKittrick Canyon Hike
    
39. Change of Plans
    
40. Alamogordo - Museum of Space History
    
41. White Sand Dunes
    
42. Lower Antelope Canyon
    
43. Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam
    
44. Bryce - Fairyland Trail
    
45. Bryce - Queen's Garden & Navajo Trail Loop
    
46. Bryce NP - Viewpoints
    
47. Mojave Desert
    
48. Joshua Tree - Lost Palm Oasis Hike
    
49. Joshua Tree - Cholla Garden
    
50. Joshua Tree - Skull Rock Hike
    
51. Joshua Tree - Arch Rock Hike
    
52. Joshua Tree - Keys View
    
53. Joshua Tree - Indian Cove Nature Walk
    
54. Joshua Tree - 49 Palm Oasis Hike
    
55. Santa Monica
    
56. Santa Barbara
    

On the way to Chaco Canyon NHP

We really wanted to visit Chaco Canyon National Historic Park, but despite trying to reach it from three different roads and directions, we failed. It seems that one really needs a 4WD, or at least a high-clearance vehicle, to get there.

The funny thing about life is that we usually want more the things that are difficult to get. Probably that's why we enjoyed so much even trying to get to the park, and also decided to make a new, separate trip to visit it sometime in the future.

Here is a short (uncut, unedited) movie shot somewhere in New Mexico, on one of the Indian roads close to Chaco Canyon NHP:


And here is another movie shot later that day on the mountainous road near Los Alamos:

Change of Plans

The plan for the second week of our honeymoon was to visit several parks and cities located along the southern boarder of the US. However, because of unexpected and rather unpleasant immigration-related issues, we decided to change our plans and head north. Instead of visiting Chiricaruha NM, Tucson, Saguaro NP, Organ Cactus Pipe NM, Anza Borrego SP and San Diego, we went to Lower Antelope Canyon, Bryce and Joshua Tree NPs. That added several hundred miles to our trip, but we did not mind it that much as we both like driving.

Before leaving for the honeymoon we were wondering if we should have taken our passports with us. We did not plan to cross the US border, but we worried that we might need them because of the new immigration law in Arizona. In the end, I decided not to take my passports (Yes, passports. I had two at the time: the "old" one with a maiden name and a current visa, and the new one, with my new name). I did not want to risk loosing them and also carrying two of them (plus some other immigration-related documents) seemed just too complicated.

I had no idea that all along the border between Mexico and the US (as well as Canada and the US) there are numerous internal immigration checkpoints that can be located as far as 75 miles away from the border... We got stopped at one of such checkpoints on the I-54 near Alamogordo, NM (some 50 miles away from the Mexico border...)

The first immigration officer we dealt with was very nice and friendly, but the second one was clearly in a bad mood. It also did not helped that he could not locate a person with my new name in their system... Luckily, I also had with me my old driver's license with the maiden name. That saved us from a lot of trouble.

Even though this "adventure" ended well, we decided not to risk getting into potentially more trouble by continuing along the southern border of the US. At the very least we were risking loosing time at each checkpoint, but in the worst case - well, I have no idea what could really have happened in the worst case, but we decided not to find out :)

Roswell - International UFO Museum and Research Center

Traveling through New Mexico, I couldn't have resisted the temptation to visit the city of Roswell, famous for the alleged UFO Incident that some believe happened there at the beginning of July 1947. Supposedly, an UFO crashed there and several alien corpses (and maybe even alive aliens as well) were found then.

The United States military maintains that it was not an UFO crash, and that the debris found at the site belonged to an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to a classified program named "Mogul". However, accounts of many inhabitants of Roswell seem to contradict that.

We expected both the city and the International UFO Museum and Research Center to be totally overdone and kitschy. However, they weren't. There were a few pictures and statues of aliens and UFOs here and there, but by no means, it was out of whack.

Also, I expected the UFO Museum to be mostly targeting kids and UFO-maniacs, and hence, to be full of weird artifacts and sensational stories. Surprisingly, that was not a case. Just the opposite, I am sure that most kids would find the museum incredibly boring as it almost only displays (pseudo-)scientific documents, affidavits from people who lived in Roswell at the time of the alleged UFO crash, and newspapers reports from those days. Lots of reading, very little fun.

Welcome to the International UFO Museum and Research Center:




One of the first newspapers' reports about the crash:


A photo of the material found at the crash site:


For the most part, the museum is filled with scientific and historical articles, newspaper reports, written statements and photographs:




Just next to exit there are figures from the 1994 movie Roswell:

Roswell - Extraterrestrial Hwy 285 and city

From the Great Sand Dunes NP we took Highway 285 to Roswell, the city where (allegedly) an UFO crashed in 1947. The part of the highway that goes through New Mexico is sometimes called "extraterrestrial highway" as, apparently, there were many UFO sightings along that road. (Second, more famous, extraterrestrial highway is Hwy 375 in Nevada.)

Driving along lonely Route 285 we could definitely imagine why aliens would decide to land there. For miles and miles we did not see any cars, and all in all during 300-mile drive we might have seen maybe 10 cars going in the same direction as we did, and maybe 25-30 in the opposite. It definitely felt a bit eerie to be driving on such desolate road. Still, to our great disappointment, we did not see any UFOs. But at least we learned that our little car can go 100 miles per hour :) (Maybe even more, but I was not too keen on testing it further...)

The sole reason that we decided to go to Roswell was to visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center located there. But since we were staying in the town for a night anyway, we decided to go for a short ride and see how people live there. Of course, I took pictures of all aliens and UFO's that I encountered :) Unfortunately, there were not too many of them...

I was positively surprised to see Roswell's Walmart decorated with UFOs:


Specialized "alien" shop in downtown Roswell:


Even some cars were decorated with aliens...

El Santuario de Chimayo

According to wikipedia and my travel guide El Santuario de Chimayó is "the most important Roman Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States." As it was also located along our route between Taos and Santa Fe (on so called "High Road to Taos"), we decided to stop there for a few minutes.

The story says that in 1810 Don Bernardo Abeyta found a "holy" (or "miraculous", if you wish) crucifix that kept reappearing at the site of the current Santuario in Chimayo, even though it was given to the priest at Santa Cruz.

Don Abeyta read it as a sign that the crucifix should remain at the site it was found, and between 1814 and 1816 he built there an adobe chapel and a shrine to house the miraculous cross.

The dirt at the place where the cross appeared was considered to have healing powers, so soon enough thousands of pilgrims began to make their way to the site. And during our honeymoon we made that trip too.

Even if you are not religious, you should still consider visiting the church as it is quite charming and nicely decorated with the 18th and early 19th centuries' paintings and sculptures made by local craftspeople.

El Santuario de Chimayo:


Stations of the Cross outside the sanctuary:

City of Taos and Taos Pueblo

The only reason that we went to the city of Taos was to visit Taos Pueblo, which lies about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of it.

Taos Pueblo is approximately 1000 years old and belongs to a Taos speaking Native American tribe of Pueblo people. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites as not only it is one of the oldest pueblos, but also is the only one that is continuously inhabited throughout its history. Unfortunately, because of the tribe's policy, I am not allowed to post any pictures that I took there, or I can be sued! (If you are friends with me on fb, you can check out some of the pictures there.)

Still, the visit to the pueblo was surprisingly nice and I would recommend it if you are in that part of the world.

After visiting the pueblo we went for a short visit to the church of San Francisco de Asis located in the city of Taos. We did not stop in the city itself as it looked overly touristy to us. But I can imagine that many people would enjoy it, so do not rely on my opinion about it...

San Francisco de Asis Church:






A few photos from the city of Taos, shot while driving:

Santa Fe

Many visitors fall in love with Santa Fe at first sight. And even though we didn't, I can see why others would. Santa Fe is located in beautiful surroundings and almost all buildings there resemble old Spanish pueblos. I guess this is what attracts artists, hippies, hipsters, as well as healthy lifestyle fanatics. It seems that Santa Fe is to New Mexico, what San Francisco is to California.

The reason why we were not too impressed with it is that it felt too touristy and too kitschy for us. Very few of the "artists" were creating something that we would consider interesting and unique. Most were just making things that tourists are likely to buy...

All buildings in downtown Santa Fe are in the Pueblo-Revival style:




Also many of the houses in the suburbs were in the pueblo-style:


Santa Fe is full of shops selling "unique" artsy items:


An interesting street fountain:


The Palace of the Governors, one of the oldest buildings in the USA, hosts a Native American market:


Another street fountain and surrounding it market:


Hot peppers! As many as you can eat...


In front of the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi there is a statue of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first North American Indian to be promoted a saint:


Inside the basilica:

Bandelier NM

From Kasha-Katuwe NM we drove to Bandelier NM, where we camped. As soon as we set up our tent, the campground hosts came to us and warned us that the previous night a rattlesnake was spotted few meters away from our site. Therefore, they suggested that we should move to other site.

I was in favor of staying where we were, but my husband seemed to be freaked out by the possibility of encountering a rattlesnake and insisted on moving the tent. So I let him picked the new campsite. He went for the one with basically no trees and bushes, as according to him snakes like to live in the tree branches and they could jump down on us... Well, we were saved from the snakes falling down on our heads, but instead we and our tent got tossed around by the wind...

The next morning we went for a hike on a 1.2 mile Main Loop Trail, which leads through several archeological sites (the Big Kiva, Tyuonyi, Talus House, and Long House).

After completing the Main Loop Trail we continue for another 0.5 mile (1 mile round-trip) to the Alcove House (formerly known as Ceremonial Cave). The Alcove House is located 140 feet (43 meters) above the floor of Frijoles Canyon and can only by reached by climbing on a set of 4 wooden ladders and some stone stairs. 140 feet might not sound like a lot, but when you climb on a really steep ladder it is!

Anil and Tyuonyi in the background. Tyuonyi used to be two stories tall and have over 400 rooms, most of which were used for storing food:




One of the ladders climbing into a cavate (a small human-carved alcove):


Beautiful green Frijoles Canyon:


One of the ladders leading to the Alcove House:


Inside the Alcove House:

Los Alamos - Bradbury Science Museum

In Los Alamos we visited Bradbury Science Museum, which hosts an exhibit dedicated to the history of the Manhattan Project, as well as exhibits demonstrating the latest inventions at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Our favorite was the exhibit describing circumstances in which the Manhattan Project was born, and the story behind its set up and growth. For example, I found it incredibly interesting and thrilling to read an original of Einstein's Letter to Roosevelt, in which he warned the president of a new kind of bomb that Germans might have been working on. As a scientist, I was touched to see that we actually sometimes have something important to say and that our voices are being heard.

The History Exhibit:


The LANL Exhibit:

Rio Grande Overlook

On the way from Santa Fe to Bandalier NM we stop for a moment at the Rio Grande Overlook. My grandfather who loved westerns and used to watch them all the time, would have been very happy to see these pictures:

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks NM

You probably have never heard about Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. At least I didn't until I started researching places worth visiting in New Mexico. And I am so glad that during my random Internet readings I somehow managed to stumble across photos of this beautiful place!

Kasha-Katuwe NM is located more or less half way in between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and is well worth the small detour. We had an absolutely great time exploring the interesting rock formations (see photos below) that form this small park. The tent rocks, as they are called, were formed by the combined force of the volcanic explosion and erosion that is pretty much unique to this place. There are two hiking trails within the park, the canyon trail and the tent rocks and the cave loop, that let you get up and close to the rock formations. We took the canyon trail first, and returned through the tent rocks and cave loop, which took us around 2.5-3h, even though we were stopping often to take pictures and enjoy the views.

Entering the canyon trail:


Newlyweds :)


At times the canyon was getting pretty narrow:


As you climb up the back of the canyon, you can look down on the tent rocks:




Blooming cacti near the end of the trail:




The views from up on the mesa top were absolutely great in all directions! Notice Cochiti Lake in the distance.






Tent Rocks up close:




Rabbit!