Bandelier National Monument

One of the things that I really wanted to see in the Southwest was the cliff dwellings of the ancestral Pueblo people. There are a lot of First Nations archaeological sites in New Mexico, but many are off-limits for good reason. Bandelier National Monument has some that are visitor-friendly. You can just go climbing up, down, or wherever you want, but you can get up close and personal with the dwellings.

Bandelier became a national monument in 1916, after a long fight to try and create a national park of the 200,000 acres Pajarito Plateau ran into opposition from ranchers and landowners. The civilian conservation corp did a lot of work during the Great Depression to preserve and construct much of the cliff dwellings.

We didn’t think that we got to Bandelier early. But we were only the fourth car in the lot. Covid closed most of the visitors center and the cafe. It was mid-March, and we weren’t even sure the cliff dwellings would be open. But they were. And the best part, we were the only ones there.

The Alcove house is not a climb for the faint of heart. It’s 140 feet up with a combination of stairs and wood timber ladders. Again we had the place all to ourselves. Not a bad surprise for the Spring Equinox.

After all that fun we still had a little energy and time left. So we took the Falls trail from the parking lot. The path traveled down through some really tall Ponderosa pines. It leads to the Upper Falls. The trail does continue down to the Rio Grande, but it was closed at the falls. Not the worst thing. The trail heads down, which means you have to come back up to return. By the time that we did get back to the lot, it was noon and the place was full.