After relaxing a night in Santa Fe to clean up from our backcountry trip in White Sands National Monument, we were on the way to Bandelier National Monument.

Since being in the Four Corners area for the past year I have seen lots of cool Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites like Mesa Verde National Park, but Bandelier was a refreshing and new experience. The site itself is totally different because of the type of rock that they were surrounded by. Instead of the typical sandstone, it’s a compressed volcanic ash that has lots of solution pockets that looks like Swiss cheese. In addition to building freestanding houses, they also took advantage of these naturally occurring caves/pockets in the rock and further dug into the hillsides. It is a very unique canyon and was well worth the trip. In addition to the dwellings, the park also has terrain above 10K feet. In fact, it has the southernmost population of pika in North America. We climbed Cerro Grande, 10,199 ft to look for them but were unsuccessful because we were unaware that we needed to go off trail in order to find them. The park is very beautiful but had recently been hammered by a flash flood in the canyon followed by a bad fire, so they are in the process of rebuilding areas of the park. Still, it’s worth a few-day visit if you like to hike.

Upper Long Houses Cliff Dwelling Ruins Talus Houses Cliff Dwelling Ruins Alcove House Kiva Entrance Alcove House Kiva Cerro Grande Fire El RIto de los Frijoles   Cañon de los Frijoles White-breasted Nuthatch Bandelier Pueblos

Pecos National Historic Site

On the way to Grand Canyon we found a couple smaller parks, Pecos National Historic Site and Petroglyph National Monument. We decided to do a half-day for each. Pecos is the crossroads for so many historical things its ridiculous. Ancestral Puebloan, Spanish, Missionaries, Santa Fe Trail, Civil War Battle and prospectors all made their way to Pecos at some point. If I got to do it all over again I would spend a full day there because there was so much to take in. They have great exhibits and a museum with lots of pieces found on site including intact puebloan pots, Spanish swords, bullets from the Civil War battle etc. 

Pecos Kiva Landscape Pecos Mission Doorway Pecos National Historic Park Panorama Pecos Mission Panorama

Petroglyph National Monument

After Pecos we hit the road we made it to Petroglyph with enough time to hike in Boca Negra Canyon where there are some really great petroglyphs. The thing that surprised me most about this monument is that it is basically in Albuquerque. When you're hiking through these great rock fields, you're essentially in someone’s backyard. The development backs right up to the monument. All the more reason that I really dig the NPS because they protect sites like this from going away forever.

Boca Negra Canyon Petroglyphs Boca Negra Canyon Rim Petroglyphs

As we started our drive to Grand Canyon we were planning on camping until we drove right into a dust storm. It was the first time that I checked the weather on my iPhone and it said “Dust.” So we pulled over and grabbed a hotel in Holbrook, AZ for the night. When we checked in I gave the guy my zip code for my credit card and it turns out that that he used to live right down the street from where I grew up in Florida, small world.

When we finally made it to Grand Canyon we grabbed a permit for a couple nights in the Canyon, one at Phantom Ranch, and one at Indian Gardens.