Thursday, November 12, 2015

Adventures in Bandelier


About an hour north of Santa Fe near Los Alamos is the Bandelier National Monument. Here you can explore and climb up in ancient cliff dwellings for a small fee. Pack your lunch and enjoy a wonderful picnic. The weather is usually lovely. Don’t let rain scare you, it will last 20 minutes and go away. While in Los Alamos, take an hour or two to check out the Bradbury Museum, it is the fantastic history of the Manhattan project.
The surrounding Bandelier area is beautiful to walk & hike.

We tend to get a little too adventurous. This pic is from our trip last year. My husband thought our minivan was an off-road vehicle.
 

There were no tourists, or any other humans for that matter at all for miles. I wasn’t sure we would make it out of the mountains and canyon that day. I began thinking our day trip would turn into an all-nighter and without cell service I wasn’t sure a tow-truck would even be an option. I’m not really recommending this portion of our trip to others but our kids LOVED this part of the trip the most! The best part of our off-road adventure is that it was free! If we ever did it again I would definitely pack plenty of water and snacks.

Oh and everywhere you go, stop and smell the flowers. Ok they may not be aromatic, but they are quite lovely.

4 comments:

  1. You guys have had some really cool adventures. I consider myself to be an adventurist and I would've enjoyed that myself. I enjoy a good hike or site seeing in general. Good thing that you guys didn't get stuck. That would've ruined the trip for sure.

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  2. That look like so much fun! I would love that. We have relatives in Arizona and we went out there for a vacation a few years back. My dad decided to go off-roading through the mountains in Sedona. It wasn't muddy like that but it was a really rough road, if you could call it that. It was more like a not so beaten path with 3 ft. ruts and boulders. At one point, a rock tore out our four wheel drive linkage on the under carriage. We had to take a little break from our adventure and repair it before continuing down the road. To say the least, it was absolutely one of the most memorable activities on our trip. Despite our little mechanical intermission, we all had a great time.

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  3. Those canyons are beautiful. But I was also be thinking as you did, that we might have been out there all night. My boyfriend would also be one to think he was driving his old rugged jeep, no matter what we were in, thinking he could take it 'off road' as well. The rain sounds like Florida, only about 20-30 minutes, awesome!

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  4. Of course you keep making me want to visit this place at some point in my life! My dad is like your husband, has to try the adventurous route or as my dad calls it "the scenic route." Those adventures as a kid were the greatest and most memorable!

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