NPS Count: 87/433
Hey there adventurers! It is time to finally wrap up this great Southwest trip with my last couple stops! The lions share of this post is for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, but there will be a blurb on Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge and Sandia Mountain as well.
Located pretty far off the beaten path on the eastern edge of Cibola National Forest, Salinas Pueblo Missions is another site that preserves the ruins of Spanish Missions and the surrounding pueblos of the native peoples. There are three distinct sites in the park. While each site has a visitor center, the hours are very different and your best best for a visitor center experience is the park headquarters in the nearby town of Mountainair, which is open every day. This park is also a great dog friendly park with a Bark Ranger program! The reason that I had to boot scoot out of Petroglyph is because my #USBarkRangers pal and NMDogs founder Angela(did you make a donation yet?), gave me the number of Ann, a volunteer with Friends of Mountainair Animal Shelter, https://fomas.org/ (if you have spare money please help them as well!) and we planned a meet up at the park. Ann leads Bark Ranger events on the first Saturday of the month at the park. These are usually at the Quarai site, but sometimes at the Abo site. The third site is Gran Quivira, but it is a little more out of the way than the other two and Ann does not lead Bark Ranger events there; I did not visit this site. I met Ann at the Quarai Site.
As I mentioned above the visitor centers have wonky hours at this park, and indeed, this visitor center was closed when I was there. However, Ann and her foster pup led me around the site. She is very knowledgable about the site and was very enthused to learn of our #USBarkRangers Facebook site! We hiked mile or two around the ruins and the surrounding wooded area. The site itself features the remains of the large Quarai Mission built in the early 1600s. The mission is called Nuestra Senõra de la Purísima Concepción de Cuarác. My Spanish is rusty, but I believe that translates to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception at Quarai. The Tiwa people were the inhabitants of the pueblo here, most of which is still buried. However, there are still walls and some kiva ruins to be found. There is a square kiva within a courtyard of the mission. The park explains it is a mystery, but this kiva appears to have been constructed on purpose with the church, probably a sensible approach to ease the “conversion” from tribal religion to Christianity. But why square? Not entirely known. The Hopi and Zuni trace their history to the Salinas areas, and kivas further west were often square.
After our hour or two meet up, Ann and I parted ways and I headed off to the town of Mountainair to check out the Park Headquarters and do the tourist stuff. In addition to free Bark Ranger tags and pledge cards, they also have a nifty Bark Ranger passport stamp! Super cool! There was a lengthy drive back to Albuquerque, so I headed out toward the highway. Along that route was the Abó site of the park, so of course I had to stop! There were many people at the Quarai site when I was there, but the Abó site was entirely just me. Similar to the Quarai site, this one has a church that also contains a kiva built within its walls. The site is much smaller however, and it wasn’t long before I was on my way.
This visit to Salinas Pueblo Missions was the “in between” of my Petroglyph visit. So my visit to Valle De Oro and Sandia Mountain was the following morning, after my stop at the Volcanos section of Petroglyph. After catching sunrise at Volcanos, I was looking at that mountain. And I wondered…is there a way to get up there? And yes, yes, there is! So I hit the road! It was an hour drive to the summit of the mountain. I love those mountain drives. There is something about seeing the elevation change signs that just hits me. Maybe living at sea level does that to you! In any event Albuquerque sits at about 5000 feet elevation, but the drive up to the mountain summit climbs about another 6000 to nearly 11,000 feet elevation! The views at the top are pretty spectacular. I understand there is a tram to get up there to a ski resort as well.
My absolute final stop, as I was driving to the airport, was to Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is the first urban wildlife refuge in the Southwest and transformed a tract of former farmland into a protected wildlife area. The site is not especially scenic, but is dog friendly, with a bark ranger tag to purchase, and is also a big destination for families with young children. The site is only about 15 years old. There is a trail that encircles a large part of the property. The trail is entirely open field and is noteworthy for the numerous artistic billboards along the route. There is also a manmade marsh behind the visitor center that seems to be a great home for birds. The visitor center itself is home to a population of cliff swallows that make these mud houses attached to the rafters!
What an amazing trip! I went out to New Mexico not really sure what to expect. I came back a Pueblo expert (hah) with a profoundly more significant respect for the native peoples of this land. New Mexico is a lot of desert, yes. But there is also a lot of variety in the landscape and topography, which puts the state pretty high up in my list of favorite states!
