Bisti Badlands, NM

Day 9 and we were on our way from Chaco Canyon to Farmington, NM where we planned to spend the night with the eventual goal of Monument Valley, UT.

Entering Bisti Badlands transports you to another planet. Erosion has sculpted the landscape into a wonderland of alien-looking hoodoos - mushroom-shaped rock towers and spires. Imagine hiking through a maze of these otherworldly formations, nicknamed the "Alien Egg Hatchery" and "City of Hoodoos." Keep your camera handy, because the Bisti transforms at sunrise and sunset, casting long shadows and painting the rocks in fiery hues.

We did not explore as much of Bisti Badlands as we had originally planned - when we departed the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, we drove across a 21 mile dirt road (the south exit route) which did not seem to have any County Road number but it takes you to U.S. Highway 371 and dead-ends at the former Seven Lakes Trading Post. HIghway 371 was our route to Farmington, so we had assumed that this would eventually prove to have saved us some time.

We had started our day with a drive from Santa Fe, NM via U.S. Highway 550 and then traversed New Mexico County Road 7900 (a long & rough dirt road) just to get to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, so by the time we got to Bisti Badlands we were very tired, very hungry, and the wind was really blowing hard when we parked. We walked about, took a few pics and then drove onwards to Farmington, NM.

Now here is what we missed by departing Bisti Badlands without deeper exploration. These images are displaying just how varied the geography is there.

This area, encompassing 45,000 acres in northwestern New Mexico, present a unique assemblage of geomorphic features sculpted by relentless eolian and fluvial processes over millions of years. The landscape is dominated by hoodoos, slender and towering sandstone spires that rise from the cracked earth. These formations, aptly nicknamed "Alien Egg Hatchery" and "Hoodoo City," exemplify the otherworldly aesthetic for which the Bisti Badlands are renowned.

Wouldn't you think that a number of movies or TV shows would have used such an unusual place to film at? We thought so too, yet when we did some research, the list of movies filmed here is pretty short.

In the trip menu list below, a "dark filled circle" represents a destination where we stayed, and the "dark filled arrow" items below that circle location, represent the destinations we visited while in that city or location. A circle icon that is not filled represents a city that we visited or stayed in, but did not necessarily explore.

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 Trip Overview Page

 Albuquerque, NM

• Sandia Peak Tramway
• Petroglyph National Monument
• Old-Town Albuquerque
• National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

 Alamogordo, NM

• McGinn's PistachioLand Farm
• White Sands National Park

 Carlsbad, NM

• Tunnel Vista Observation Site
• Trestle Depot Recreation Area
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park

 Roswell, NM

• International UFO Museum

 Santa Fe, NM

• Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, NM
• Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, NM
• Ojo Santa Fe Spa Resort, NM
• Bradbury Science Museum - Los Alamos, NM
• Los Alamos, NM
• Bandelier National Monument, NM
• Nambé Falls, NM
• Meow Wolf, NM

 Chaco Culture National Historical Park, NM

 Bisti Badlands, NM

 Monument Valley

 Grand Canyon, AZ

• Planning Your Grand Canyon Visit
• Grand Canyon South Rim Top Sites and Itineraries
• Grand Canyon El Tovar Hotel

 Sedona, AZ