New Mexico

New Mexico is full of giant national parks. They even conveniently put some of them right next to the cities. The fact that a hiking trail was 15 minutes from my hotel in the middle of Albuquerque was really the only saving grace for the city. The city itself just seemed cheap and tried to paint things that pinkish-orange color to make it look southwestern.

I'm going to climb this mountain in the Cibola National Forest.

lizard

This is still part of the trail. It involved some light rock climbing.

I'm up a bit higher.

And this was the dead end. I was starting to run low on water so I gave up on finishing the climb.

After the desert mountain, I went to Santa Fe. This city was smaller, but much nicer than Albuquerque. If I was ever rich enough for a vacation home, I would want it to be here.

This is part 1 of the Santa Fe National Forest. It looks much more foresty than Cibola did.

I had to drive through a good amount of dirt road.

But I finally found a parking spot to start hiking. I made a small attempt to drive in a little farther, but these roads are not built for a Mazda 3.

I got into a valley that had actual grass.

There was even some water that hadn't dried up.

Santa Fe, day 2. This time I went to the park of the park on the other side of the city. It looks vastly different

There were lots of cows around here.

The cows seemed to look at me funny.

Driving around some roads in the upper part of the park, I found some nice views.