Returning to road trip notes

Hello, everyone.

The last post about the road trip showed the Magdalena Driving Way information sign.

After the drive north on the back roads from Quemado, New Mexico, we took a right on the US highway into Albuquerque.

This was convenient as our hotel was on that side of the city, anyway. Our hotel was also convenient to the Petroglyphs National Monument, which after vigorous city growth is now actually inside of the area of Albuquerque. 

We looked into the site and discovered that it has three walking trail with petroglyphs. (Plus a fourth recreational area with none.) One allows no pets. One only allows pets on the portion of trail that doesn't actually allow viewing of the art. (That seems rather pointless for a traveler that wants to see the art and walk the dog.) The third one is very welcoming to your leashed dog--bring the little bags in case he/she gets the mood to make a deposit alongside the trail--and is also easy to access. 

We parked the vehicle at the little parking lot and headed to the trail. It split very soon and we had to decide whether to go left on the flat sand or right up onto the lava ridge. We went right. (This may be backwards to what a lot of folks do, but it was very much the right thing that day.) 

Walking along the ridge gives a lovely view back toward the city and across to the Sandia Mountains.

The sun was out when we parked the car. The mountains across the way seem to have generated this rain.

This may actually have been from later in the walk--but it does show the view of the Sandias and the oncoming weather.

The weather was why going up onto the ridge first and then returning by way of the mostly-flat sand was so very much the right plan. If the rain is coming, having it hit when you're walking on level sand is infinitely preferable to having it hit when you are trying to descend on a mix of black lava rocks and beige sand.

Our walking companion was also interested in viewing the various plants and rocks. She was very good about staying on the marked path!

Looking back toward the top of the ridge

The way down from the ridge was marked by convenient cables, which were sturdy to grasp if one felt nervous going down the sand and rocks. There were already some petroglyphs to see during the descent. 

There were a lot of petroglyphs to view after reaching the level sand area. In fact, I felt like by walking the less-traveled trail that welcomed dogs we hit the jackpot. There were a lot more petroglyphs to see than we had expected. (No I'm not going to upload every single photo!)

This is a sample of the interesting artwork:

I liked this image of the bird. Is he pulling something out of the water?

The present-day city of Albuquerque has a river. The people who made the petroglyphs seem to have been very interested in water birds, as well as snakes and leaving hand prints and such. 

They made these artworks by using a pebble to chip away the black, weathered surface of the lava stone and reveal the paler underlayer of material. Their art has survived for hundreds of years.

When we saw the first few of the petroglyphs I wondered if this was another way of demonstrating status, based on how difficult the first ones we saw were to reach. Later on we encountered many more that were easy to get at and I had to revise my theory. 

If y'all should find yourself in Albuquerque, this is a very interesting and worthwhile walk. (You can take other interesting walks in the Sandia Mountains on the other side of the city, too, but I think this one is unique.) As far a walking goes, it's not very long (around 2 miles) and the climb is not very great. You can expect to get some good practice at stepping over and around various rocks and then some practice at walking on loose sand. All very good for maintaining conditioning! 

There are no facilities or concessions at this path, but there is a visitors' center which has a flyer with the trail information and a restroom. We understood that there were displays with more information inside the building also, but since we had the pup with us, we moved directly on to walking the trail.