Petroglyphs & Volcanoes

Still following our plan to head north, we left Kiva RV Park and moved to the KOA at Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque.   We had a nice site and were somewhat amazed to see we had what looked like a lawn.

 

It was actually astro turf, but it made a nice change from dust.   We also had a reasonably good view of the Sandia Mountains, and enjoyed watching the mountains as they changed colour at sunset.

One of our first trips was to Petroglyph National Monument.

We hiked several trails the first of which was Boca Negra Canyon, which is considered the birthplace of the Monument.   We hiked to the top of the rocks, which although not far was surprisingly steep and very windy.

There were some interesting petroglyphs, including one that resembles a historic Latin cross.   The crosses are thought to have been made by Spanish shepherds in 18th or 19th century.

The macaw petroglyph.

From there we drove over to Piedras Marcadas Canyon, this is the most remote section of the park, the trail is 1½ miles long across soft sand.   We saw more petroglyphs on this hike than the others. 

These are just a very few of the petroglyphs we saw.  I just loved this little face, he looks as though he's totally bemused.

This one looked as though he was having a great time at a party.

Shopping for lunch.

 As always Kokopelli made an appearance.

This chappie appeared to be creeping out from underneath a large rock.

At the end of Piedras Marcadas Canyon looking back towards Albuquerque

We enjoyed our trip to Petroglyph National Monument, although to be honest we were surprised to find that suburban Albuquerque surrounds most sections of the park.

 

Our next stop was the Volcanoes section of the park.   It’s a day use area and by the time we arrived at the car park we didn’t have time to hike the trails.   Not only that, the gorgeous warm, sunny weather we’d enjoyed all day disappeared, the sky clouded over and the wind started to blow. 

DB looked at me as though I was mad as I hopped out of the truck to read the signs and take some photographs.   He was right, the wind was really strong and quite cold believe me I soon climbed back into the truck. 

Have fun, we are!