Hiking and Exploring Bandelier National Monument

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

Birdsong filled the canyon as we stepped into the cool of the morning. By arriving at dawn, my sister, Carol Harper, and I were beating both the crowds and the heat of the late July day, the former objective intensified by our recent escape from the summer hordes at Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. A stop at Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos, New Mexico presented an appealing alternative on the way home to Oklahoma. Not exactly on the way, but close enough. Adolph F. Bandelier, the legendary anthropologist of the Southwest for whom the monument is named, first visited this spot in 1880. He called Frijoles Canyon, where we were standing, “the grandest thing I ever saw,” extolling its magnificent growth of pines, oak and poplars, and the towering cliffs of tuff (rock formed from volcanic ash). Bandelier also found multi-storied ruins, often with plaster still on the walls. Today, the National Park Service protects this repository...

@Susan Dragoo details this trip to Bandelier National Monument, take a look at the article in Issue 39:

Seeking Solitude in a Canyon of the Ancients

Issue 39 Page 1

[ppine]

This site is under rated.  The canyon is an amazing place to visit with wonderful cliff dwellings. You can climb ladders to some of them.  Well worth going out of your way to visit.