There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so I thought that the little pink cast to the sky would be all we would get. But instead, we got this amazing color in the sky to the west as the sun sank behind the hills.
Sunday morning we took it slow enjoying the luxury of electricity to make waffles and a good cell signal to surf the internet. At about 11:30 we decided we’d set out to visit Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument which is only a few miles away. We missed the turn and had to turn back after a few miles and then discovered it was going to be a 90 minute wait to get into the park. They have a limited number of parking spaces in the park and when they’re full, they make you wait in line until someone comes out before they let anyone more in. It was a beautiful fall day with the temperature at 74 degrees, it was Sunday AND the Balloon Fiesta was on down in Albuquerque. Once the balloons are no longer in the air, all those people who have come to Albuquerque for the Fiesta go out looking for something to do. And Tent Rocks seems to have gotten slammed with them.
We turned around and went back to Cochiti Lake and stopped at the Overlook to see the lake.
Here’s a shot of the campground and the arm of the lake that runs out in front of it.
We went home and thought about it and decided to make our lunch and take our books and sit in line however long it would take. The park gate is only open from 8 am to 4 pm and they start the process of clearing people out at 3:30 so that everyone is gone by 5. So going late really didn’t sound like a great plan.
We arrived at the line at about 1:40 and made it almost to the 30 minute wait sign before we had to stop. In the end we were only in line for 25 minutes before enough folks had left to allow us our turn to enter. It’s about a 4 mile drive from the gate up to the parking area for the trailhead.
We drove around the lots at the trailhead and there were maybe 3 spots open and one of them was actually big enough for the truck. Score. The Cave Loop Trail starts at the parking lots with a view of the kinds of formations that give the park its name.
Most of the tent formations are topped with a boulder cap that keeps the formation from eroding any further. That makes for balancing rocks all over the place.
As we set off along the trail I got a view back towards the formations on the cliff face and a whole bunch more balancing rocks.
The trail takes you from one set of white cliffs to the next and always there are tent formations someplace.
About a 1/2 mile along the loop trail you come to a fork in the trail. I took the right fork to the Slot Canyon Trail knowing that there would be lots of tent formations AND a slot canyon to photograph. This trail is 1 mile each way and takes you up 630 feet to the top of the cliffs. I knew I wasn’t going up to the top (while Walter waited for me down below) so I just set out to enjoy the canyon a ways.
The canyon narrows very quickly and you find this big old Ponderosa pine standing in the middle with about 5 feet of its roots exposed by the erosion from flash floods washing through the canyon.
With each turn of the trail the formations reared up around you.
This area is a result of pyroclastic flows from the Jemez volcanic field 6 to 7 million years ago.
The tent formations are fairly uniform in shape but they vary in size from a few feet to over 90 feet tall.
The canyon narrows to a true slot canyon and only one person can pass through the slots at a time.
Some of the passageways are flat but others require you to scramble up a steep little section of rock or over a bunch of boulders stuck in the passage during flooding.
I continued on delighted with the perfect points on the tops of these tents.
Eventually I reached a pile of rocks I didn’t want to scramble over and turned back. If you ever get a chance to visit the Tent Rock be sure to hike up the Slot Canyon at least part of the way. It’s worth the trip. On the way back you could tell that the rain on Friday (that we had at Bandelier NM) had hit hard here. Clearly there had been a flash flood in this canyon because there were uprooted bushes here and there along with the piles of rocks.
I found Walter nicely rested sitting on a bench in the shade and we continued on down the hill back towards the parking area.
Just at the end of the trail there was a sculpture (labeled as such) and Walter posed for me behind it.
There weren’t a lot of flowers besides lots of Rubber Rabbitbush but there were quite a bit of Broom-like Ragwort (Senecio spartioides).
Along about sunset the sky lit up yet again—a nice bookend to a lovely weekend.
