Originally posted by FSUTribe76:
Originally posted by warchant03:
Very short hike that could be a cool experience, is Tent Rocks by Cochiti. It's literally an exit you take off I-25 just south of Santa Fe. Rocks are formed into conical "tents," take the slot canyon hike and you go walking through a very narrow canyon (see pic below), make a small trek up the side of a hill and then you're looking out over a cliff with a pretty cool panoramic view.
I mean, in the spectrum of things you may have seen its nothing THAT cool, but it doesn't take long and given its location right off I-25, might be something to consider.
As far as New Mexico, tentatively I have is coming down from Amarillo Texas to Roswell after our dinner at the over the top Big Texan. We didn't originally have Roswell as a stop but it's a convenient rest area between Amarillo and White Sands. Then once I saw the Alien Zone a tacky tourist stop with a dozen or so "alien photo ops" I decided we'd take a couple in the morning and then dip down the hour drive to Carlsbad before heading over to White Sands. I found out that if you don't want to hike the two hour guided tour which is allegedly strenuous you can take a self guided tour using an elevator up and back and it only takes about half an hour to see the Big Room.
Then we're going to eat dinner at Sadies or El Pinto in Albuquerque. The next morning we'll get up before dawn to get sunrise shots at Tent Rocks and then do several of the other things around Santa Fe including eating at Maria's.
I'm not that excited about Carlsbad, we're just going to do it as it's a big name tourist spot that is not too far off our planned track. If we hadn't done cave systems recently then I'd be more excited, but it's only been a couple of years since we've done Jenolan Caves in Australia which is so large you actually drive cars and buses through the first main cave and a lot of people (we did) end up parking in the cave and we did the Glowworm Caves in Waitomo New Zealand which has a full River cruise you take through the system where there are millions of glowworms (really glowing spider looking creatures dangling from silk threads) that light up the caves like it's the night sky in a desolate area where you can see the Milky Way.) Plus we've done Mammoth Cave and cenotes near Cozumel and several lesser American cave systems like Luray and the Florida Caverns. So I'm fine with taking the shortcut in Carlsbad and don't need to hike all over creation. We did that in Jenolan where we spent almost an entire day doing seven or eight different cave systems with aid of a guide. That was amazing but no need to recreate if possible.
