March 3-8, 2021

March 3-8, 2021

We are on another trip to visit Aimee’s mom in Amarillo, TX. I tried to amuse myself with trips to the golf course to practice my swing. Both times the wind was exceptionally fierce making this onerous. The Texas Panhandle is known for this plentiful green energy source, so the region is loaded with Turbines. Unfortunately they are ‘reliably unreliable’ as the recent cold snap illustrated. Wind can’t be relied on for power when it is really needed.

On our last drive back from Amarillo in September we stopped in the Bisti Wilderness Area. During that trip planning, I learned the whole northwest quarter of New Mexico is dotted with similar geological oddities. I made plans to visit two more sites on this return drive. We left Amarillo after lunch and spent the night in Bernalillo, NM on the northwestern outskirts of Albuquerque. This is the last opportunity for a hotel room between here and Farmington in the far northwest corner. The lack of hotels is a testament to the remoteness of this high desert corner of New Mexico.

We leave the hotel early the next morning. We are in luck and the weather is unusually warm for this late winter day. We drive gradually uphill for two hours. Just past the exit for Chaco Canyon, we leave paved roads behind and drive west for twenty miles to the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness Study Area. For an unpaved road, it was in pretty good condition.

We donned our hiking shoes and walked north across a wide-open landscape. It is cool, overcast, and blustery. We haven’t left the Amarillo wind behind. After a mile we descend into a ravine and immediately see what looks like a giant mushroom garden. These stone oddities are reminiscent of scenes from a science fiction movie. Like Bisti the soil is easily-eroded silt, mud, and volcanic ash. Hard rocks and limestone caps temporarily protect the soft base underneath as the rest is swept away.

As we hike further along the ravine, it opens into a large wash, with widely separated badland structures. We are on a tight schedule so after an hour we make our way back to the car.

We drive a few miles down the road and then veer off down a dirt track to an area dubbed Valley of Dreams. Aimee is not happy as our car gets bounced around by the ruts. Fortunately after only two miles we reach the trailhead. Surprisingly we are not alone; there are several other cars.

With my hiking GPS, we make our way across the open desert to coordinates I found on the Internet. After 1.5 miles we reach a heavily eroded Badland hill. And it is colorful! While the soft sediment is still grayish, the overlying rocks are ochre, the top ridges are coal black and some of the surface pebbles are brick red. And blue sky is starting to peak out!

We spend the next hour circling this hill clockwise encountering hoodoos of all shapes and sizes. Certainly Mother Nature is the most creative artist. It is a real treat to hike over, through, and around this whimsical landscape. It is certainly surprising the wide variety of different shapes erosive powers can produce out of the same basic starting material.

Also scattered throughout the formations are thousands of pieces of petrified wood. We even found a log in the middle of the desert. These are the fossilized remains of prehistoric trees that once flourished in this ancient river delta. Paleontologists have also found dinosaur bones eroding out of the hills.

After completing the circle, we hike back to the car and begin the long drive home. We first head west along a dirt track. The landscape is criss-crossed with these ruts confusing our multiple GPS units. Eventually we stumble onto a graded road and the GPS successfully leads us to paved roads and what passes as civilization in this desolate corner of New Mexico.

From this 7000' high desert locale, it is downhill almost all the way to Tucson along one canyon after another. The West is so beautiful, especially tinged with remnants of snow. We think about stopping several times, but keep pushing until we arrive almost two hours after sunset.