NPS Count 86/433
Hey there Adventurers! There has been another delay in my writings, but I am trying to get back on track! With this post we are nearing the end of a great exploration of Pueblo culture in Colorado and New Mexico! Petroglyph National Monument is right in Albuquerque, NM making it a super accessible site to large amounts of people! The site has Bark Ranger tags and certificates, and dog friendly trails and areas.
A super exciting part of this whole trip was meeting up with Angela, the founder of NMDogs, a charitable organization that is spearheading legislative efforts to protect dogs in New Mexico from being chained up outside. She is also a super amazing member of our #USBarkRangers Facebook group! That morning I got up and met her at the NMDogs headquarters in Albuquerque. I met her pups and we talked about her efforts to save dogs that are chained up in New Mexico. She is an amazing human doing amazing things to help dogs. Please check out her organization and consider donating to a great cause!
So, after meeting her she, Roadie, and I went to the visitor center and got Bark Ranger tags and certificates for him, then headed off to a hike. There are several major sections to this park unit and the visitor center is detached from all of them. I only checked out two of the five main areas of the park. Four of them show off the the namesake petroglyphs. The one petroglyph site I briefly visited was Piedras Marcadas Canyon. To access this canyon site you need to head off to one of the nearby neighborhoods. There are a few access points to the trail but all require neighborhood access and the one we went to was basically the dead the end of a subdivision road with limited parking next to a house. Despite the much cooler weather I had experienced on this trip prior to this stop, it was now pretty blazing hot and Angela and I parted ways (we met for dinner later!) for dog safety! I then hiked a bit down the trail to check out the petroglyphs. I actually had other plans for the day that were time sensitive so I only ventured down this trail a little to find some petroglyphs, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before I found them! After snagging some pictures I headed back to the vehicle and hit the road to my next stop.
I wasn’t done with Petroglyph, however. That evening I Ieft my Airbnb to check out the Volcanoes day use area, a little drive away. This site is further removed from the visitor center and has a gate that is locked in the evenings. If you could just cross the land from the visitor center you would be there fairly quick, however, to get there requires driving around a large perimeter of the entire site for access. When I got there I discovered a closed gate (gates hours are 9-5) that I could walk around but it was getting late, so I decided to come back early in the morning.
If you didn’t know, (and I didn’t!) Albuquerque is a historically volcanic landscape. The Volcanoes day use area features several ancient volcanic cones and protects the volcanic landscape. There are no petroglyphs here, so if your intent was to see those, you will need to visit one of the other sites. The Volcanoes day use area is open sunup to sundown, but if you park at the gate before or after hours you have to walk about a mile or so just to get to the trailheads. That is what I did early the next morning. I was actually able to catch a pretty awesome sunrise here and explored the area via a nice morning hike. The hike allows access to a couple of the volcanic cones, but one in particular, the first one you will come across, the JA Volcano, is off limits in honor of the native history. The other ones, if memory serves me, you can hike up, but not to the very top. There isn’t any blockade of access – it’s and honor system here, but I hope everyone adheres to that!
If you made it this far NO NOT FORGET: NMDogs.org
The Parks Adventurer 