La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Adventure

This afternoon K and I decided to go on an adventure.  We originally were thinking about heading to El Rito, which is a town near Abiquiu.  El Rito was having a gallery crawl this weekend that sounded like fun.  We opted not to, though, because El Rito is a several hours drive from us.

Instead, K heard of some petroglyphs that are practically in our backyard.  They are on BLM land in La Cieneguilla, which is right off of Airport Road in Santa Fe.  Neither K nor I had ever been there before and, I gotta say, it was pretty awesome.

To get there, continue on Airport Road past the intersection with 599.  Pass the horse stable place and Calle Debra.  You will see a nice fenced-in parking area on the right hand side of the road.  Park there and the trail head and trail is very well-marked.  Like so:



The trial moseys along a barbed wire fence for a while, but eventually cuts toward the escarpment.  There were A TON of petroglyphs up there.  I took some choice pics.  Here's one of a cool looking bird and some deer/horses:



Here's a close up of a turtle/lizard/horny toad:


Here's K with a whole bunch of awesome ones (and some electric green moss):


And another one of K with the glyphs:


And me and some additional petroglyphs:


The trial climbs up the cliff side and then you scramble over rocks to walk the length of the cliff.  It's a beautiful view up there.  Those are the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the distance:



We ended up scurrying up some rocks to the top of the mesa and taking an alternate route back to the car.  It was a lovely, short, easy to moderate hike around. 

When we got back to the car, we picked up a bunch of cans which we collect and take to the scrap yard for cash-money.  What is it with people throwing their garbage all over the place here? 



Check out that sky!^ 


Edited to Add:  I forgot to post this petroglyph of a dog/coyote:

I liked this one because I thought it looked like Lucy (she's the one on the right):