A Short Hike in White Mesa

Saturday we wanted to get out of the house for a bit. We took a couple of hours and visited an area close to home: White Mesa. White Mesa is 28 miles from our driveway. It's actually a lot closer, but we have to follow the roads. It took us just about 40 minutes to get out of our car and started on the hike.
Our original intentions were to hike in the Ojito Wilderness Area. We wanted to traipse around in the area that the Seismosaurus skeleton was discovered. We got sidetracked by the interesting gypsum formations and stopped there instead. We'll get out to the Ojito again soon. We'd like to figure out where they found the Seismosaurus, but that's another adventure. There are plenty of places in the area that we'd like to explore.
We left in the afternoon with our neighbor Kaylie. She was excited to go with us, so we brought her along. We were driving and saw an interesting mesa and formation, so we decided to stop and hike. After a short walk along an old two-track dirt road, entered a small canyon at the base of the mesa. Before long we made it into a small canyon and found a beautiful rock outcrop that was entirely composed of gypsum.
We took a few pictures in the crevasse of gypsum and the kids scampered around on the rocks. We then found a track ascending the ridge to the top of the mesa above us. We followed the track. Well, we followed Jesse, Kaylie and Silas who rushed up ahead. Solomon and Amelia tagged along with mom and dad. They weren't interested in going any higher up the trail. About 4/5 of the way up to the top of the mesa, their complaints wore down Alice and she waited with them at the base of the trail.

At the top, the trail looped around the mesa and met up with other mountain biking trails. There were some nice pinon pine and juniper along the trail. The weather was beautiful. We soon returned to the base of the trail and met the others. It was only a short trip, but an enjoyable couple of hours on a beautiful Saturday. Many of the photos can be seen on Silas's Picasa page.

Posting Some of Alice's Paintings

I've put an album up with some photos of Alice's paintings. I'll see what I can rustle out of her for some more paintings because I know a lot of people like to see her work.

Bisti Badlands Day Trip

Alice's mom (Donna) was in town for a week enjoying New Mexico. She and Alice spent three days in Taos and a day in Mountainair. On Friday, the whole family loaded into the minivan and trekked to the Bisti Badlands. I had been curious as to what was there, so this was a good opportunity to do some exploring.



The Bisti is a desolate region about 35 miles south and southeast of Farmington, NM. We got out of our house late in the morning and had several delays before we got out of town. After a quick stop at the Firestone and Smiths for for donuts, we headed north on highway 528 out of Rio Rancho. This proved to be a timeconsuming adventure as there was a fatal balloon accident on the highway earlier and all traffic was being rerouted. Eventually we headed north on highway 550 towards Farmington. Shortly after passing the turnoff for the Chaco Cultural Center, we took a short cut on road 7500, cutting off 75 miles of travel. Instead, we followed the dirt road for 12 miles until we came to the utterly remote De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area. We stopped there and hiked for 45 minutes through a small wash to see some stark landscapes. We saw deer tracks in the wet sand of the wash. We found several small chunks of petrified wood and mounds of cracking mud.



14 miles further along this dirt road, we came to Highway 371. We followed the highway 7 miles north until we came to the turn-off for the Bisti Badlands. We followed the access road for 3 miles to the parking lot. There was one other car there when we arrived, but we crossed paths with the returning family 100 yards beyond the gate. We had the entire wilderness area to ourselves for the duration of our visit.


After passing through the gate at the parking lot, there is a large plain of sand that is the main drainage path. A wash passes through the center. There had been rain at some recent time because there were some puddles in the wash and a lot of wet sand in it. The wind was blowing pretty strongly from the north as we tramped across the plain toward the interesting geology. Here we are crossing the plain.

It should be noted that there are no designated trails here. When exploring the badlands, one is allowed to wander aimlessly and take in the emptiness at his own pace.

After traversing the flood plain, there begin to be mounds or hills of volcanic rock. The rock color ranges from typical black lava rock to a bright red lava rock. This rock is interspersed with the sedimentary features which range from stiff mud formations to sandstone hoodoos. We stopped and took a family picture at one of these hills where sandstone overlayed the bright red rock.






In some ways, the Bisti is how I pictured Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. It is empty and barren, yet oppressive in its features. It is easy to wander and find yourself in a tight spot and all alone. If one isn't careful, he could easily wander for quite some time finding the right direction as distances are confused by the hills, mounds and formations that dot the landscape. It is truly a surreal place. See more photos here.

Typo Police Cracking Down

There are many lessons to be learned in life. One lesson is that simple tasks become more difficult when done when not in a state where full attention is given to the task. Such was the case when I created Prairie Dog Rustlers late last night. 1 AM on your laptop in bed while talking to your wife is not a time when simple tasks can be completed error free. Thus we had a typo in the URL for the previous site.

Just so everyone knows, PRAIRIE has two I's in it and is a type of terrain with lots of grass. PRAIRE is just a bad phonetic way of spelling that activity you do before you eat or while fingering your rosary.

So change any bookmarks you had for this site to this address: http:\\prairiedogrustlers.blogspot.com