Spring trip to New Mexico?

dedmiston wrote:
Hey Bill - You could literally throw a dart at the map of NM and find someplace magical.

It's weird to quote oneself, but whatever...

I hadn't thought of this before, but many years ago when two of our kids still lived at home, we were trying to find a destination for their spring break trip. We didn't exactly throw a dart at the map of NM, but pretty close.

My wife was flipping through Sunset Magazine and came across a beautiful shot identified as the "Bisti Badlands" (BISTI Badlands / De-na-zin Wilderness). We couldn't find any info on it other than a location on Google Maps, but it seemed cool enough and we decided to make that the destination for our week.

We think we found the place, but there wasn't really any "there" there. It probably would have been amazing, if only we'd been able to find some info on where to actually go and what to see. We found an entrance in the fence and hiked around all day before taking off. We never found any grand points of interest, but the day was amazing nevertheless.

At one point we were hiking through a narrow twisty slot canyon. My wife and I were together and the two kids were around a bend behind us. At one point we startled a huge owl who more than startled us. The owl jumped up and flew away right over our heads. Seconds later we heard the reaction as it tried to land in the canyon behind us and got startled again by our kids and flew away.

It was a great day, but definitely not the highlight of the trip. We had a blast just improvising our way around the state. There's so much to see.