It was the first day of our 9-day road trip in New Mexico. Started in the morning from Santa Fe, we visited Bandelier National Monument first. It was a short drive to Valles Caldera National Preserve. We knew immediately that we arrived when a wide meadow rimed by small hills emerged on your right side of the road. The caldera was created some 1.25 million years ago by a super volcano eruptions. Scientists say that eruptions released 16 times the material that spewed from Mt. St. Helens when it erupted in 1980. This nearly 89,000-acre preserve has forests, meadows, peaks, valleys, and wildlife, including more than 5,000 elks. Used to be a private ranch, the area was purchased by the federal government in 2000 and part of the National Park Service in 2015.

We entered the caldera by turning from NM 4 through the entrance onto a park road. We could only drive about 2 miles in, to the Valle Grande Entrance Station I think. Then the road closed from there. The park has 54 miles of hiking and biking trails, which we didn’t have the luxury of time to enjoy any of those this time. We did saw elks, and tons of prairie dogs on the side of the road running in and out of their holes. From there we drove a little further along the scenic road to the Battleship Rock then started our way back.