Who knew Grants, NM had so many National Sites!

The Parachuting Beavers
Jun 23, 2020
7 min read

By the end of June 19th we rolled into Grants, New Mexico. I was surprised by how big it was. I know its a major CDT town but there's a lot to do and see in town and a ton of National Sites within 2 hours. This fact... as well as the continued poor Air Quality Index... is why I am still not on the CDT, though I plan to be on by 4:00 am on June 23rd.

On our way out of Albuquerque towards Petroglyph National Monument I spotted this exercise studio in the wild! We sneaked up slowly and quietly for a good photo hoping not to scare it back to the 80's🤭

Practically in Downtown Albuquerque you can find some of the loveliest Petroglyphs in Boca Negra Canyon. This National Monument is charged with protecting and preserving one of the largest petroglyph concentrations in North America. Each one is carved on volcanic cliffs of the West Mesa escarpment. You may not know it but New Mexico is the most volcanically active in the lower 48. Native peoples used sandstone hammers and chisels to make these marks.

Though we can never know exactly what they meant, some give us a glimpse back in time and tell us that the people of this area were trading with communities as far off as the Amazon. At this site, and others in the area, scarlet Macaw Petroglyphs and remains have been found. In the modern era we so often think of native peoples as being isolated from one another.... after 3 days touring these areas I know nothing is farther from the truth.

The closest National Monument to Grants is El Malpais. This publicly protected land is broken up into sections; some is BLM-managed National Conservation Area and some is National Monument. La Ventana Natural Arch, one of the largest in New Mexico, is quite close to Grants in the National Conservation Area. It is formed from Jurassic Zuni Sandstone.

The arch may be the most popular stop in the park but the entire area is really beautiful. There are lots of sandstone butts and bluffs in a variety of colors; white, red and gold. We walked through the scrubland hoping to see a desert tortoise but no such luck. Now that we've seen a badger in the wild we are just missing a wolverine and a desert tortoise to complete the list of animals we hoped to see on our last trip.

Now if you know Mike, Beaver 1, at all, you know he can spot a brewey with no signage two weeks before they open.

Of course this town was no different and we found ourselves in a junkyard brewery called Route 66. Above is a 360 of their lobby. Mike took 20 minutes to look around before he even ordered a beer🤣

Here is a 360 of the other seating area. It is a working brewery and junkyard so the owner keeps his tools and project cars in the brewery area.

We sat in this area because it's lighter and brighter, and we got to chat with Heather the super nice bartender. She is a local but loves to hike, even though she's scared of sleeping outdoors, bugs and high places. She was amazed that I will be walking from Grants to Somewhere Wyoming all by myself. This may be a no name brewery in a little town but this is what living in a van is all about. We get to chat with the locals, learn about their corner of the world and hopefully everyone leaves a little wiser.

We slept on a pull-off this evening because it was far enough out of Grants that we could see the meteor shower, the milky way and about 100 times more stars than at home.

We nipped into Walmart this morning to get some fresh veggies and I met the grocery manager. I was making jokes about how I can't get tongue and tripe at my home Walmart and how I am going to have to make a complaint when I get home. She was incredulous, No tongue or tripe at Walmart? I then told her we don't get Hominy either. She told me they sell it canned, frozen and dried in her section... and then she sent us to El Ranchero Cafe for breakfast. We had menudo, a Mexican breakfast soup, which is typically eaten after a night of crazy drinking, made with cow's stomach in a red chili pepper broth. It also has Hominy, (lye-treated maize), lime, onions, and oregano. It is so lovely and we just never see it in the northeast. We also had a combination platter so we could try a bit of everything. Upside... amazing breakfast... downside... we started hiking late and in the heat.

When we got to the El Malpais trailhead I groaned; it is going to be a hot day. New Mexico has had low rain and almost everywhere is in a fire ban. We never saw these guys on the trail so no idea what issue they were tending to. This hike has a lot of spectacular stuff; bat caves, lava tubes / flows, volcanoes and lots of lizards.

Here is the collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris). He was just chilling on a rock. Luckily they don't move all that often so Luna just bustled on by. Now the coolest living thing we saw on this hike was the infamous robber fly.

He is of the family Asilidae who are all powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, hardy proboscis that they use to literally suck the life out of their prey. They generally wait in ambush and then snatch their prey in flight. Lucky to catch this one with an ant lunch.

I hope you enjoyed the volcano video. I had really wanted to see it as when I came through on the CDT from Pie Town I did not take the detour because it was so hot. Every time I look at Mt. Taylor, my nemesis for tomorrow, I think thank God I'm doing it early. Some day Mike and I are going to have the coolest outdoor rock wall with all the rocks we picked up. Don't worry we didn't take the volcanic one from the National Monument... there are more than enough on the side of the road in downtown Albuquerque. Now its on to El Morro ( the headland) National Monument to see early settlers and ancient petroglyphs side by side.

Imagine looking at this mesa in the distance. You would be so excited knowing that your days of desert travel without water are over because hidden at the base of the cliff there is a reliable waterhole.

The wetland you see above. This made El Morro a popular campsite for many hundreds of years. At this place, Ancestral Puebloans, Spanish and American travelers walked in each others' footprints and carved over 2,000 signatures, dates, messages, and petroglyphs into the light sandstone walls. Yet in this pool a monster lies. We got to see the huge 15 inch Tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum).

Sorry it's so hard to see, but look at the black blob in the front by the reeds... we're 12 feet up. They are primarily nocturnal, and in this environment cannibalistic because of the lack of year-round insect sources. This population is also largely neotonic, which means that, even though they can become sexually mature, most won't. They will retain their gills and live their 10 to 15-year life in the water. You can google them... they really are so cool.

Here is just a smattering of all the carvings we saw. Top left are traveling to California homesteading, the top right many wrote in Spanish and were here to conquer or find wealth, the bottom left are big horn sheep petroglyphs and the bottom right is a military man escorting his general. There are poems, political rants, railroad workers' names, and warnings written on these walls. Here you are at the intersection of history.

Welcome to Chaco Culture National Historic Park. I almost got on the trail on Sunday and would have missed this beauty. Chaco Canyon was occupied from 850 CE to 1250 CE. Today the park is one of only twenty UNESCO World Heritage sites in the U.S. Once you visit you'll understand why it was given this designation. Chacoan civilization reached much further than the walls of the canyon we visited. They had roads 30 feet wide that led out of Chaco to the north and the south. Other roads connected smaller settlements such as Chimney Rock, a site Mike and I visited 2 years ago and is about 110 miles away as the native person walks.

Mike and I visited 8 of the sites in the NHP. Sadly I can't cover them all so I'll just hit the most amazing high points. As you look at this settlement, know that it was 4 + stories tall. The outer and inner facings on the walls are astounding. The outer rocks are chosen for shape, color and quality. They are carefully hand-quarried to look seamless and to hide the workhorse rocks stuck together with mortar on the inside. The inside walls were plastered over and painted with red, yellows, greens and blues.

There are also an astonishing number of Kivas, religious rooms. Here is a great subterranean Kiva. Religious ceremonies and life events would have taken place here. There are fire pits, vents, seats and posts to hold up a multi-storey roof. But there are so many others. Tiny private kivas, tower-like kivas built into square rooms inside the great complex. They must have scoured hundreds of square miles to find the main tree beams for the structures as this is a desert.

No one has an answer as to why the native peoples came to live here. Or what happened to them. Or where they went. I'm not sure if you can identify the rockslide that is in the foreground of this photograph, but the native peoples were more than aware of the instability of the rock that was above this portion of their site. They actually tried to remedy it with rocks and mortar and other devices. It didn't collapse while they were living here but rather while the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was working to restore the site.

This photo shows you how immense the walls were in these structures. You can see the minor support beams still sticking out of the walls as well as a very unique corner door and mid-wall door. As I stand here I cannot help but think, I wish they had a written language. I wish they could tell me what the symbols on their plaster indoor walls meant, what are the petroglyphs for? Did you really capture a supernova on the walls of this canyon? Why did you build here and where did you go? I don't have anything to say except that you should all come here and see it for yourselves... perhaps not in June!