El Malpais National Monument: Part Two

Happy October, my friends. It's the month in which I gave birth to my first child, Erik. He'll be celebrating 42 years this month, and I can hardly believe how old his mother must be to have a child that age.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, our visit to El Malpais National Monument had me taking pictures of everything I laid eyes on. I decided to break it into two parts in order to cover it all with as much enthusiasm as I felt at the time. Thanks for bearing with my itchy shutter finger. For today's post, I'll pick up at our next stop along the road through the park, La Ventana Natural Arch. As it turns out, it has it's own page on the National Park Service website. From the parking lot, we could barely make it out against the background of the hillside.

In several places, we were reminded that dinosaurs once walked in these lands.

This next one talks about the two main features of the park. 

It was a short walk to get closer to the arch, but before leaving the parking lot, I snapped a picture of this blooming desert bush. I believe it is known as Fourwing Saltbush, and it is native to New Mexico.

Beyond, I walked closer to the arch. I like how the sun is shining in and lighting up the sandstone from behind.

I was shooting into the sun, but I was able to shade my fixed camera lens with my hand to avoid getting lens flares. 

Remember that arches are formed by wind, while natural bridges are formed by water. And that's pretty much all I have to say about this area. 

From there, we drove to the last destination on our map, the Lava Falls Trail. It was really the highlight of our visit. Here's a little bit about what we saw there:

This sign helped to identify the different flows we were seeing, and talked about how each was formed.

Here's a pretty good example in the image below.

Here's another with an amazing little wildflower growing out of solid rock.  It looks a little like the larkspur we saw in Colorado.

Here's the second one.

There's a pretty good example of that in the foreground of the image below. Notice how bright green that shrub is in the foreground, when compared with the forest green color of everything else.

And finally, these many bowls we saw along the way.

In the image below, you can see a sort of "amphitheater" naturally formed by these forces.

Below are some examples of both the smoother "pahoehoe" lava and the lava falls for which the trail is named.

The trail was well marked with cairns, but it was difficult to walk on at times. We had to watch where we put our feet with every step to avoid falling. Sometimes, a foot would land on something unexpectedly loose, or else our feet would shift in an unexpected way from walking on such an uneven surface.

At times, we walked along wide cracks that appeared bottomless. Better keep your little dog on a leash if you're going out here.

In the image below, you can see McCartys Crater, looking to the northwest. It is a small shield volcano with a cinder cone near the top, and it was named for the small village at the northern reaches of its flows. It is responsible for the lava flows in the national monument and surrounding area.

We picked up a trail guide along our way, which contained this story: During World War II, the United States Army set aside nine square miles around McCartys Crater for use as a practice bombing target. Fifty years later, in 1994, unexploded ordinances were detonated and removed by officials from several National Guard Explosive Ordinance Disposal Detachments. Although a search was done for other bombs, there may still be more hidden in the lava. 

Okay, so the trail was a 1.1 mile loop, which seemed farther because of the difficulty walking over such a rough surface. We took another look around as we made our way over the final sections of the loop.

I was continually amazed at the things we saw growing in such a hostile environment.

Along the way back, I noticed his pinon pine with a hole the size of a doorknob.

Nosy person that I am, I stuck my camera lens down inside and forced the flash to fire. I didn't see any sort of animal living there, but the trunk did appear hollow inside.

And despite trekking over this rugged landscape, we concluded we weren't going to die on this day when we could see our camper in the parking lot.

It was a fascinating hike, and a beautiful day for it. I was glad we picked this day to do our sight-seeing because the next day (yesterday) it rained most of the day and night. I had some time to get to the laundromat and finish the laundry. The rain started just as I was beginning to carry the clean and folded laundry back to the camper.

We had a nice afternoon reading and slow-stitching, and that brings our visit to Grants, New Mexico, to an end. Today we'll head off to our next destination in Holbrook, Arizona. All along, I've wondered if the town is named for Hal Holbrook, but no. Just now, I ventured to its Wikipedia page and learned that Holbrook was founded in 1881 or 1882, when the railroad was built, and named to honor the first chief engineer of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, Henry Randolph Holbrook. The town will serve as our base camp while we explore the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. We've visited both places before, but not since we were teenagers. I've wanted to get back to see it for a long time.

So, with that, it's time to get moving. We'll be hitching up and hitting the dusty trail again in a few hours. We'll have three nights in Holbrook. Depending on how much time we take visiting the national park, we may end up with another free day there. After that we'll move on to Oracle, Arizona, where we'll be riding ATV's again. There's a little more sight-seeing to follow, but then we'll be heading for home. And all of that to say there's still a lot more to come on this journey. If you're enjoying all this sight-seeing, then stick around.