We’re going on a family vacation to New Mexico in a week to avoid the Seattle rain! Wanted to see if anyone had any advice for not-to-be-missed attractions, etc.
Our accommodation is booked and non-refundable, so the non-changeable plans involve touching down in Albuquerque Sunday morning and driving down to Carlsbad. We’ll stay one night, catch the caverns on Monday and drive up to Santa Fe Monday evening. We’ll stay in Santa Fe until Friday before driving back to Albuquerque for our flight home.
Certainly not the most direct trip but that’s a decent amount of “road trip” driving, which we’ll enjoy. I read that flying into El Paso would have been quicker in terms of getting to the caverns but the flights from Seattle weren’t great and I’d rather be on the road in the desert than hanging around for airport connections …
We don’t mind arriving in Carlsbad quite late, so would prefer to take the more scenic route. I’m thinking of catching I-25 down past Socorro, turn east on 380 until Carrizozo, south on 54 until about Alamogordo, and east on 82 until 285 into Carlsbad. It looks like that captures some scenic drives. On the way up to Santa Fe it’ll probably be dark for a bunch of it so we’d just do the fast and boring 285 route.
Does that sound sane? Anything we should not miss on the drive down? We have some ideas of what we should catch in Santa Fe / Los Alamos but would be delighted to hear some advice from locals on what we shouldn’t miss in the area!
Depends how early you arrive/leave Albuquerque, but if you go down I-25 to route 60 and go West about 50 miles, you’ll be at the Very Large Array (Very Large Array - Wikipedia). Depends on if you are science-interested or not. If you’d rather see more natural wonders, take I-25 to route 70 and go East to White Sands Missile Range (nice Museum there), White Sands National Park, and Alamagordo, which has a nice space museum and the World’s Largest Pistachio. Take 82 East to 285 and South to Carlsbad.
Suspect others who live out that way will have more ideas.
First off, I would arrange your plans to Carlsbad to 1) either arrive early enough on the Sunday, or 2) stay another night (which might be worthwhile given all the driving - give your butts some time out of the car) to catch the “bat show”. I visited the caverns way back in '71, and the bat show (when they leave for their hunting grounds in the evening) is my most vivid memory. They have seats and a whole viewing area. It is amazing - not to be missed if you’re visiting the caverns. (and no, you don’t have to worry about any bats getting into your hair
It’s just a short side trip, but I second visiting the VLA. You don’t need to spend a lot of time there, but it is very cool to see in person.
As to Santa Fe area there is a lot to see/do:
Bandelier park is very cool. Cliff dwellings and just great scenery. Part of the park, but kind of “outside” the area is a very cool place call Tsankawei (sp ?). You can take a nice hike along and through a number of the cliff dwellings.
Los Alamos is a cool city. There’s kind of a small museum, but very informative about the Manhattan Project. It’s also in a very scenic area.
Taos is very cool. The drive along the Rio Grande when you come up from the river to the plain where the city is provides a spectacular view. If you do go, it is worth the drive to cross the Rio Grande bridge as well.
Depending on how interested you are, there are a number of smaller, lesser known cliff dwellings and historic sites all in the Santa Fe - Los Alamos area.
In Santa Fe itself:
The Georgia O’Keefe museum is always great
I also enjoy the Folk Art museum (on museum hill)
Right off the downtown plaza is the church with the “impossible” staircase. Very cool to see.
I don’t know if they’re still there, but there used be some shops on the plaza with Hopi (as opposed to Navajo) kachina dolls. Amazing to see, and like a museum just in the shop.
Driving from Santa Fe back to Albuquerque I’d recommend the “backway” via the “turquoise trail” through Madrid. Madrid is a pretty cool city, and it is a scenic drive, If you have time the drive will also take you to the backside of Sandia Peak. So you can pop up to the summit and get great views of ABQ.
You have picked a tight schedule with only one day in Carlsbad, driving down Sunday and returning Monday. It’s about 4-5 hours one way, and since Monday will be mostly at the caverns I’m only going to suggest an activity for Sunday. Rather than going out of your way to see the VLA, take I-25 south to Socorro, and stop at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge and/or Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Right now there are tons of sandhill cranes in the Rio Grande valley. Sevilleta is on the way to Socorro, Bosque Del Apache is just a minor detour and not near as far out of the way as the VLA. From Bosque Del Apache you can take 380 on your planned route. The road from Alamogordo up to Cloudcroft is a nice scenic drive. If it’s getting late watch for elk on the road.
The weather should be good for the next week or so, but if it gets iffy use NM Roads to check road conditions.
Missed the edit window: I’ve been seeing cranes farther north this year, you may try Bernardo Wildlife Area too (just south of Belen, not far off the 25). There were birds there last week.
The Billy the Kid Scenic Byway is interesting, I was just there last May. You can visit the old Lincoln court house, see his grave outside of Ft. Sumner, a museum or 2.
Do a little research and you’ll be surprised at how much of the things on Young Guns/Young Guns 2 is historically accurate. Not all of it, but a good chunk.
About the Very Large Array. I visited the VLA back in 2015 as a side trip to the Trinity Atomic Test Site. It is out-of-the-way and if you and the family are not science oriented is probably not worth the 50 mile (one-way) drive. I’m a space nut so seeing the VLA up close and touring the exhibits was worth the 100 mile deviation coming back from Trinity. But only once.
P.S. If you do go make sure to purchase some gift shop trinket. Most of them are only sold at the VLA facility so if you have one it’s proof you’ve been there.
The Very Large Array is extremely impressive! There’s a nice film in the Visitor’s Center, and you can even take a walking tour of the grounds!
We enjoyed Roswell. It’s a college town, nice wide streets, very clean, and tacky references to the UFOs. Even an UFO museum! Souvenirs from there have a lot of cachet!
The valley where Hatch Chiles are grown means good food, and do bring some home!
I’ve never taken the route you’ve proposed and on the map it does look more scenic. 285 indeed is pretty boring until around Vaughn. I’d agree that one possibility is to make sure you get to Carlsbad early enough on Sunday to see the bat show.
The bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns is very impressive, but it’s the wrong time of year to see much. The bats are either hibernating or have migrated. They usually start showing up again in mid-April.
Your proposed route to Carrizozo then south to Alamogordo is a good one. Halfway between the two cities is Three Rivers Petroglyphs, with thousands of examples of Native American rock art. Above Alamogordo, in the mountains near Cloudcroft is the National Solar Observatory, also worth a visit. The space museum in Alamogordo is nice too.
You could also continue west on 380 from Carrizozo and visit Capitan and Lincoln. As pkbites mentioned, it’s an interesting area (scenic too). Capitan is the home of Smokey Bear and Lincoln has a lot of history surrounding Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.
You could also follow Dag Otto’s suggestion and visit Bosque Del Apache, just south of the Hwy. 380 exit on I-25, to see thousands of birds including huge flocks of sandhill cranes (mostly in the morning and evening). It’s easy to get to, close to I-25 and you can pop back up to 380 and continue to Carrizozo. Or continue south on Hwy. 1 when you’re done to get back on southbound I-25 without backtracking. Then take 70 east from Las Cruces to White Sands (well worth visiting), as The Stainless Steel Rat suggests. That puts you very close to Alamogordo.
Lots of cool stuff between Albuquerque and Carlsbad! You’ll have to pick and choose, no way to see it all in one day.
While in Santa Fe you could take a drive up Hwy. 84 through Espanola (watch for where it splits from 68) to Ghost Ranch, home and studio of Georgia O’Keeffe. Then continue just a few miles to Echo Amphitheater, a huge natural formation in the red rock cliffs. That whole area, including Abiquiu reservoir and the Chama river, is just beautiful.
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks is pretty cool, as blondebear mentioned. Some very unusual rock formations and the hike to the top above the slot canyon is worth it.
The Rio Grande gorge near Taos is spectacular, as cormac262 says, and be sure to drive out to the bridge west of town.
If you visit Los Alamos, take a very scenic drive on Hwy. 4 west through the Jemez mountains and Valles Caldera. If you make it to the town of Jemez Springs have lunch at Los Ojos tavern where they serve a very good green chile cheeseburger.
If you go to Taos, continue north on 522 to Questa, then take 38 to Eagle Nest and 64 back to Taos for a very scenic loop tour.
The Sandia Peak Tramway is about 10 miles NE of Albuquerque. My coworker and I rode it a few months ago. A fantastic experience, and well worth the $25.
Wow, so many great replies. Thank you, I’ve read them all!
I did look into this and it is something I’d be interested in. But I don’t think the rest of my party would be as interested and it isn’t feasible from a time perspective. That’s an additional 100 miles on the Sunday and we barely have time to stop for much as it is.
It doesn’t look like the “bat show” is running at this time of year. I think what we’ll do is catch as much as we can on the drive down to Carlsbad (it doesn’t matter if it’s already night when we arrive) and spend most of Monday at the caverns. We can spend the late afternoon / evening driving to Santa Fe.
Yeah, in an ideal world we would have had an additional couple of days to work with and would have split the drive over two days or so. Seems like we’ll miss not being able to linger at some of the stops on the way. But flight prices, school schedules and weekend plans kept us from adding a few more days at the end, and we’d like to stay in one place (Santa Fe) for four nights too. I think we’ll get to leisurely enjoy the caverns but it’ll be a little bit of a whirlwind on the drive down. Hopefully we can take notes on what deserves a second look for our next trip down!
Can the route I proposed (I assume 82 in particular) get quite dicey in the winter? Would you recommend I bring our chains along?
Driving in southern NM is pretty boring. It’s generally flat, scrubby desert. That may make the drive seem to take a long time since there’s not a lot of beautiful things to look at to pass the time. When I think about doing all that driving right off the bat, it seems exhausting. Although the caverns are awesome, I might instead recommend staying more in SF/ABQ and northern NM and doing day trips. There’s a lot to do in that area and the drives will be more scenic.
That’s true: if the OP had not already make plans for exactly where to stay, and they had already seen the Caverns at some point, but had not done the road trip before to know if it would not seem overlong, I’d agree that a valid alternative would be to stay closer to SF/ABQ. But even if they were making plans now, if they were interested in the Caverns and had never been, I’d say it’s a must: it’s an order of magnitude better than any cave I’ve seen.
Although I’m doing vaguely the same route as part of a road trip later this year and plan to camp somewhere in the northern Lincoln National Forest in order to break up the trip into two legs and to save on hotel money.
NM is beautiful. I’ve seen all the places mentioned here. There is a lot to see. Too bad your schedule is so tight; it’s a big state and hence most of your time will be spent on the road.
Maybe just stop by Roswell and/or White Sands? Alamogordo is, to me, really lovely (the town not the atomic site). There’s a space museum there, if you’re interested.
If a snowstorm hits just about any road could become difficult and closed for a day. I wouldn’t worry about it, but if it happens you can use the website to find a new route if needed. Cloudcroft on 82 is at about 8700 ft but the road crews are good at clearing the roads fairly quickly. Chains would be overkill.
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m at too. This was a fairly impromptu “OMG it’s been raining straight for three weeks, we’ve got to get out of here when the kids are on break!” decision. We really started out thinking “Santa Fe” rather than “New Mexico” but once I read about the caverns it became a must-do addition. It’s something all of myself, my wife and my kids will love.
I think we’re gonna end up with the schedule feeling a little tight for the drive down and maybe the drive up, but we’ll relax a bit once we’re in Santa Fe and maybe slow down a bit.
I also don’t mind the driving, even if it isn’t the most exciting landscape all of the time. I particularly enjoyed the road trip I did some years ago through Arizona and Utah. Some of that was endless and devoid of landmarks too, but it’s just so atmospheric and different from what I’m used to here in the PNW and back on the southeast coast.
That’s probably a little too exciting for my family. Well, me. I don’t like heights We might look at Albuquerque adjacent stuff when we’re in Santa Fe. The Turquoise trail might be a good option for when we need to get back to our flight.
We might look at Albuquerque adjacent stuff when we’re in Santa Fe. The Turquoise trail might be a good option for when we need to get back to our flight.