Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area

Good early morning, my friends. We're moving on to Bernalillo, New Mexico, this morning, and so I'm here bright and early to catch up on the goings on here. Kitties have had their treats, and I'm drinking my first cup of coffee. I barely have my eyes opened, and so I'm hoping this will be somewhat coherent. 

Backing up to yesterday, we started our day by finding a McDonald's along our route to the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area. We haven't had our beloved Egg McMuffin since leaving home, and we were Jonesing for it. Besides, we were getting ready to do some hiking, and so a good breakfast was practically a requirement. But first, we had to disturb Sadie's slumber. She doesn't mind. She just hops up into her cubby without missing a snore.

After breakfast, we headed due south on NM State Hwy 371 for about 35 miles. The landscape started changing just after crossing the San Juan River.

These are Navajo lands we were traveling. Maybe about five miles out of town, we started seeing more agriculture.

There were fields of golden corn stalks, already harvested, and then some more green stalks that would have been later plantings.

Heading south, we started seeing signs indicating the distance to the Bisti Wilderness. The road was flat and level until we grew closer to our turn-off, where we dipped into what appeared to be a very wide wash. It was then we started seeing the beginnings of what makes up the Bisti (rhymes with Fist-high) Badlands.

We were expecting to see an alien landscape of hoodoos.

It began to look more strange as we reached the turn-off...only the signage was off somewhat, and we first drove right past it.

We had to turn around and backtrack, following this very slow truck up a hill.

The road turned to gravel almost immediately after leaving the highway, but it was a much smoother road than the day before. Also, we only had to go about 3 miles, versus the 18 miles from the day before.

Finally, we were there. Translated from the Navajo word Bistahí, Bisti means "among the adobe formations." De-Na-Zin, from Navajo Dééł Náázíní, translates as "Standing Crane."

From the parking lot, we noticed the bands of color in the hillside to our left.

This is a very remote and primitive area. There are no marked trails, and very little in the way of "instruction" for visitors. We had a stroke of good fortune running into a BLM cartographer in the parking lot. Asking for his guidance, he told us quite a bit about the place. We were to walk through this gate, and then into the great beyond. 

He recommended following the "wall" on our right and then exploring side canyons as we went. It sounded good to us. It appeared again as a flat wide wash. The floor was littered in small black rocks. In another area we explored, the rocks were red.

We walked along until we came to the first side canyon.

These rocks were hard, and yet, they appeared like cake frosting, with layers folding back over themselves.

Our shadow selves were looking forward to seeing more. They even brought their shadow drone. (Shadow video will appear in a few days. Edited to say you can see it right here.)

While Mike was getting ready for a drone flyover, I headed up into the side canyon to see if it was worth exploring.

The nosy drone was right behind me.

It reminded me of some caves we've visited with the same kinds of geologic formations, only these were above ground.

Getting in closer, these looked like some of the stalagmites we've seen in certain caves.

It was an intricate maze of slot canyons and more hoodoos, and well worth exploring. 

Mike was busy with his drone. At one point, it got behind a hill, and he lost contact with it. Fortunately, the drone is fool-proof, and he was able to tell it to "return to base." After that, it rises 90 feet into the air to avoid bumping into anything, and then it comes back to where it was launched. It's like a very well-behaved dog with a camera.

Walking on, we explored more of this alien landscape.

You can read more about what makes up the area on Wikipedia here, and on the park website here. It isn't really a park, but rather a designated wilderness under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management.

Here, this patch of darker rock was encrusted in the lighter sandstone around it. We were to see more of this as we continued on.

We walked weaving in and around some of the larger formations.

Mainly we were sticking to the smaller washes.

When we came to a dead-end, we backtracked and then moved on to the next side canyon.

We wanted to get to the other side of the wash, where the cartographer told us we could see some things that looked different from what we were seeing here.

It was quite a distance to walk, and we could see it was fenced off. We decided to return to the truck and drive up the road a short distance to a parking lot where overnight primitive camping is allowed. There was just a trickle of water crossing the wash, and so we felt safe enough. Some of the reading material I collected mentioned this, and strongly cautioned against crossing if rushing water were present.

We only drove another mile or so when we came to a fence blocking the road. There was a parking area to our right. Ahead was a private residence. The whole area was fenced off, and signed "Area Closed." Nevertheless, previous travelers had broken down the fence and crossed anyway. We weren't in the mood to get shot, or into any other sort of trouble for the day. We decided to turn around and stop at a parking area we'd passed by. There was a great view here and Mike was able to get some good drone footage.

Zooming in on some of the formations in the background, it looked like this:

There were just these little tiny blooming things growing in various spots. The little pink flowers are about the size of the head of a pin. The rest is very thorny. Hands off.

And what kind of animal made this track? It was about 4 inches from the tip of the longest claw to the heel.

We were getting hot and hungry, and so we decided to head back into town. When I see a road like this, I can't help but think of my mother. As a military family, we traveled back and forth across the USA four times. We had a tiny little trailer for our family of four, but I have very fond memories of those days. I loved traveling, and I loved our little trailer. My mother would look at a road like this, stretching off into infinity, and she'd say, "There goes the road." I sure do miss her sometimes.

We came to New Mexico with a printed off sheet showing us New Mexico's "Enchilada Trail." The previous evening, we'd wanted to have dinner at the closest one to us, Dona Maria's, which is #7 on the list. Surprisingly, it closes at 4:00 p.m., or so it seemed, and so we didn't go for dinner. It seemed like a good place to stop for lunch though, and so we stopped there next. As instructed, we ordered a plate of chicken enchiladas with green sauce. Between the two of us, we split this plate of three enchiladas. I really just wanted a taste, so I had just one and a few bites of beans and rice. I let Mike have the rest.

It was as good as promised. The tortillas are homemade, and that really took them over the top. There are more restaurants listed on the roads ahead, but we took advantage of this stop since the camper is currently off the truck, and we can maneuver a little more easily.

Okay, and so we headed back to the camper after lunch. Mike wanted to wash his truck after traveling those dusty roads. It seemed like a good time to do some laundry, and so I stayed behind and did that. I worked on a little slow-stitching too, and it was a pretty relaxing afternoon.

This morning, we'll reload the camper onto the truck, hitch up the ATV trailer, and head on down the road. It's only about 150 miles to Bernalillo. We'll be just north of Albuquerque at our next stop, and we'll have two nights there while we explore Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. As of yesterday, we had three weeks left in our trip, and so there is still plenty to see on the road ahead. 

We've been very lucky with our weather, finding warm temperatures and sunshine wherever we've been. The only rain we encountered so far was in Silverton, and that fell overnight. The trip seems charmed with no mishaps so far. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Experience has told me it's easy to jinx oneself with too much talk of good fortune. We're just hoping the dice keep rolling in our favor as we continue our journey. Stick around. There's so much more to come.