El Morro, NM - Land of Lava

The Ancient Way (aka NM Scenic Hwy 53) takes you into a beautiful area of New Mexico where there are old volcanoes, lava fields, and sandstone bluffs. There are several attractions off of Hwy 53 that brought us here and in order to stay in the thick of it all, we chose to stay at El Morro RV Park & Cabins (aka Ancient Way RV Park). The location is prime - putting us right in between El Mapais Nat'l Monument ("ma-pa-ace"; we struggled with the pronunciation so we just called it El Magpie) and El Morro Nat'l Monument. It's a pretty rough campground. We had water, sewer, and electric, but all were in such crazy locations that we had to double our water hose, use the electric extension, and not even try to connect the sewer. We'll dump when we leave. The sites are so unlevel, that after putting our levelers three high and not seeing a difference, we just used some cinder blocks as chocks and are living at a slant. But the park has lots of pinyon pines and junipers, but none too tall to affect our satellite dish. And since we have no TV or cell service, we are sooo excited about having internet. We can even watch some of our favorite TV shows on our computers. Did you know there's a bonus to watching TV on your computer? 20 second commercials! And only a couple are interjected into the show. That makes up for the small screen.

But, again, the location was perfect for accessing all of the things we wanted to see.

Bandera Volcano & Ice Cave
We've seen several volcanoes over the years, but felt that this volcano crater was one of the most defined. The trail that winds you up and into the cone shows off the lava fields.

Another trail takes you over the lava field and past lava tubes to the Ice Cave. After hiking at these elevations, the 31 degrees of the Ice Cave felt great.


El Mapais National Monument
We hiked the El Calderon loop. We told the ranger we wanted to see lava tubes, and she complied. At Junction Cave we could scramble down the rocks and through the tube for about 50 yards to the other opening. Now, if you have helmets, headlamps, ropes, and some knowledge you could actually go caving in many of the lava tubes at the Monument. We did take some flashlights and went into the "dark side" for a ways before going the direction we were told to hike. Loose, sharp, lava rocks kept us from going too far in. El Calderon Loop took us past several caves, a lava trench, to the top of a cinder cone, and through some pretty scenery.

The cinders here were a rich-red color.

There's a lot more to this park than we were able to see on this visit. We'd like to hit it again some day and visit the area along Hwy 117. Probably the best way to see it is with 4-wheel drive. But even that sounds like it could be hit-or-miss. In the rain, these dirt roads turn into slick mud sending 4-wheel drive vehicles careening sideways. The ranger shared stories of drivers getting stuck, tow-truck drivers getting stuck trying to pull them out, and then the tow-tow-truck drivers getting stuck trying to rescue the other two! We had thought about taking our mountain bikes into the park on these roads, but the rains scared us off.