White Rock and Bandelier National Monument

With yesterday a clear blue sky and temp about 60 we decided to go exploring again. We drove to White Rock, a small community near Los Alamos, and walked the Blue Dot Trail of the White Rock Canyon. This canyon was carved out by the thousands of years of erosion of the Rio Grande. Can't say the colors were spectacular, but the scenery was magnificent. Black lava rock and dirt made up the entire walk and we saw the Rio Grande's full-force on how it carved out the area. It was too steep to crawl down and walk along the river so we just took the rim walk. From this walk we decided to drive towards Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos and just do a drive tour. The fire from June which destroyed over 60% of the park and it's surroundings was evident everywhere we looked. In order to visit the NM you had to take a shuttle in - the parking area was also destroyed not only from the fire but the flash flood in August that took out many roads as well. Los Alamos is known for it's leading role in coordinating and leading the development of the atomic bomb back in the early 1940's and this complex is still going strong and has diversified. We had to pass through a security check at one point. We wonder how they managed to escape the fire - we could not see any damage to the buildings.

After driving around Bandelier and Alamos, we started back on the road towards Santa Fe when we passed a sign showing Tsankawi Prehistoric Site Trail of Bandelier National Monument and decided to stop and see what this was all about. I had read that there were ruins and a hiking trail that showed hieroglyphics. What a neat trail! We saw cliff dwellings, ancient ruins where the ancient Pueble Indians lived, cave dwellings and some of the hieroglyphics. And did we get filthy dirty in the process. The trail is carved out of white tuff ash and over the centuries you can see the foot prints of people as well as animals that traveled on the cliffs. If you look closely at the picture you can see one of the ladders we had to climb. making the hike a little hairy. I am not sure I would hike this trail again - we had to wrench our legs and bodies in places just to move forward. At the end of the trail we heard alot of birds and thought they were nesting inside many of the caves we saw. However, after the first wave of birds calls died down, they started up again in another direction. It was snow geese flying south for the winter and their calls were echoing off the cliffs. We saw hundreds if not thousands of these birds overhead. How cool!