October 18th was a first full day in beautiful New Mexico. It was full of adventures….
There was not a lot of road traffic on 25 South. We stopped at the Valley of Fires Recreation Area to look at the lava flow.
Approximately 5,000 years ago, Little Black Peak erupted and flowed 44 miles into the Tularosa Basin, filling the basin with molten rock. The resulting lava flow is 4 to 6 miles wide, 160 feet thick and covers 125 square miles. The lava flow is one of the youngest lava flows in the continental United States.
The lava flow reminded us of Iceland, where we visited last October.
We love Petroglyphs so we had to stop at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site and took a short hike. These petroglyphs were made by a group of prehistoric Native Americans that archaeologists refer to as the Jornada Mogollon. The pictures were made with stone tools by removing the dark patine on the exterior of the rocks.
The circle and dot motif is prevalent at Three Rivers. In fact, circle petroglyphs account for over 10 percent of the approximately 21,400 petroglyphs. But this is not that common at other Jornada Mogollon rock art sites.
More art! This trail was like Where Is Waldo with us trying to spot the petroglyphs.
Hiking the petroglyph trail in 80+ degree temps was delightful.
The Sacramento Mountains and the Tularosa Mountains are on both sides of the site.
Sometimes you just have to do something touristy so we stopped at McGinn’s Pistachioland! This place was fun and we sampled the free flavored pistachios.
Ripened pistachios were on the trees at Pistachioland.
From there we went to White Sand National Park and took another Park off our bucket list!
Although the walls of looked like a wall of snow, it is finely grained sand.
We did some hiking on the Park’s Backcountry Trail. It was 86 degrees but the sand was not hot to touch. It looked like snow everywhere, and we had a few tablespoons in our boots when we got to the hotel.
We felt like we were alone on the moon. The orange sticks are the trail markers.