Grants, New Mexico

We stayed in Joseph City for three days. We left to go to Grants, NM on Friday. We stayed at the Blue Spruce RV Park.

We didn't really do much on Friday but did stop by the New Mexico Mining Museum. It is a museum that does an underground tour of uranium mining which has big history in New Mexico. They built a replica of a mine and then built the building on top of it.

Mining Museum

Saturday we went to the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano.

Ice Cave and Bandera Volclano

You walk a trail about half a mile up to the volcano for a view into the cone. Here is the trail on the way to the volcano. Notice the trail is on volcanic rock.

Volcanic Trail

This is called a splatter cone and was next to the trail.

Splatter Cone

This is the view we had from the trail as we were walking up to the volcano.

View from the trail

We made it to the cone of the volcano. It was a nice walk with many interesting volcanic features to see on the way up.

Bandera Volcano

This is as far as they would let us go! My camera let's you take a selfie, so we did! Lol..

Volcanic Selfie!

After the hike down we headed to the Ice Cave. It is only about a 1/4 mile to the cave.

Trail to Ice Cave

On the way to the Cave we came across this sink hole.

Sink Hole

These stairs take you down to the Ice Cave. The cave is located in part of a collapsed lava tube and never rises above 31 degrees.

Stairs to the Cave

The green behind me is frozen solid. It was a warm day so walking down to the cave felt nice!

Ice Cave

After we walked up to the volcano and down to the ice cave we drove to El Morro.

El Morro National Monument

As a shaded oasis in the western U.S. desert, this site has seen many centuries of travelers. The remains of a mesa top pueblo are atop the promontory where between about 1275 to 1350 AD, up to 1500 people lived in this 875 room pueblo. The Spaniard explorers called it El Morro (The Headland). The Zuni Indians call it "A'ts'ina" (Place of writings on the rock). Anglo-Americans called it Inscription Rock. Travelers left signatures, names, dates, and stories of their treks. While some of the inscriptions are fading, there are still many that can be seen today, some dating to the 17th century. Some petroglyphs and carvings were made by the Ancestral Puebloan centuries before Europeans started making their mark.

El Morro

Water would fall from the top of the sandstone rocks and collect at the bottom forming a natural pool.

Waterfall

The natural pool still holds water today. This water brought travelers from afar!

Natural pool

We walked the half mile to the Inscription Trail. This is where travelers from as early as the 1600's left messages in the sandstone.

Inscription Sign

This one from RH Orton is not very old. 1866.

RH Orton

This inscription is by Juan de Oñate in 1605. This is the oldest historical inscription at El Morro.

Juan de Oñate

We intended to go into the Junction Lava Cave. We thought we would do a short hike in it and back out.

Junction Cave

The problem was that you are looking at the trail into the cave. We decided that we would pass this challenge, and after all we had already had a big day today!

Trail down into cave!

We ended up 4x4 driving up a cool trail for about 4 or 5 miles instead. Great scenery and some neat lava flows.

Sunday we went to a small Baptist church. Old fashion traditional worship but the message was great! We then went to the El Malpais Sandstone Bluffs and La Ventana Natural Arch.

The Sandstone Bluffs afforded a great view of the lava fields and volcano cones.

Sandstone Bluffs

We then continued on to the La Ventana Arch.

La Ventana Arch

There is about a half mile very pleasant loop to the arch. Patty stood on a rock to take this picture! Lol!

La Ventana Selfie

Well that's it for Grants, New Mexico. We are happy that we took the time to stop here this time. There is so much to see in this beautiful country if you just take the time to stop and look!

God Bless you,

Brian and Patty