Named for the Native American rock art (petroglyphs) that dot the park, Petroglyph National Monument is a rugged reminder of the ancient lava flows and volcanic activity that once rocked the land. The cooled lava makes a wonderful canvas for early dwellers to leave their mark — from birds and snakes to star and spirals [...]

Taos Ski Valley is one of the most popular places to ski in New Mexico! With more than 300 days of sunshine and over 300 inches of snow each winter, Taos Ski Valley offers fantastic skiing and winter sports as well as stunning views. It is also one of the few family owned and operated [...]

More than 60,000 years ago, a giant volcano blew its top. A rain of cooling cinders formed a perfectly shaped cone over 1,000 feet high. Today, it’s known as Capulin Volcano. The rim of the crater is about a mile in circumference and the crater about 400 feet deep. Rising 1,300 feet above the plains [...]

Gleaming like arctic snow, the sand dunes of White Sands National Monument are anything but cold. Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert just north of the border with Mexico, and have created the world’s largest gypsum dune field. Gypsum typically forms large crystals. There is a cave [...]

[ad#Google Adsense]El Malpais is one of the most unique outdoor adventure areas in the Southwest. El Malpais means “the bad country” in Spanish, so named by the Conquistadors who had to detour around rough terrain. This area lives up to its name with more than 590 square miles of razor-sharp black lava flows, the landscape [...]

[ad#Google Adsense]Beneath the Chihuahuan Desert and Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico is a hidden wonder. It’s hard to image that under a rather bleak stretch of cactus, rock and sand there exists a world of exquisite beauty, hidden in more than 300 known caves (more caves are being discovered every year). Carlsbad Caverns National [...]