Travelogues
2015 New Mexico & Utah Trip

Wednesday, September 23

Bisti Wilderness

We returned to the BLM Office this morning, but they weren't very helpful. They seemed very unprepared to help with travel questions. It was much more of a business office with a receptionist than an information center. From the BLM, we drove over to the Farmington Visitor Bureau, where the people were much more helpful. It seems obvious that they don't get a lot of specific questions about the places we're going, but at least the ladies at the visitor bureau tried to be helpful.

We returned to the motorhome, packed up, and drove back to the Bisti Wilderness. When we reached the parking area, there were four government vehicles all parked in a row. That seemed a bit strange. While we were eating our lunch in the Explorer, a lady walked over and introduced herself as the BLM District Manager and told us the group was there because a dinosaur skeleton was being removed from the Bisti Wilderness. A helicopter was coming in to pick up the prepared pieces and remove them so they could be displayed in an Albuquerque museum. She told us what kind of dinosaur it was, but I have forgotten it already. She also said a T-Rex (Bistahieversor sealeyi, which means "Sealey’s Destroyer of the Badlands") had been dug out of the Bisti "Bisti Beast."

We finished lunch and started hiking up the wash toward several sites I identified on Google Earth as good possibilities. I labeled the destinations in Google Earth as Hoodoos 1, Hoodoos 2, Hoodoos 3, etc. For simplicity, I'm using the same naming convention in these journals for all the destinations we hope to photograph in Bisti.

As it turned out, we were walking so quickly that we skipped Hoodoos 1 & 2. Hoodoos 3Google Earth was a very cool area. We found black igneous blocks on mudstone pedestals, sandstone discs that looked far too large for the mudstone column that supported them, and colorful mudstone layers with limonite nodules interspersed.

Bisti Hoodoo Bisti Hoodoo Bisti Hoodoo

We continued up the wash to "Hoodoos 10"Google Earth with it's own style of pedestal hoodoos. The sandstone had a rusty-looking burnish on top to make them a little more dramatic. The hoodoos were also generally much larger.

Bisti Hoodoo Bisti Hoodoos Bisti Hoodoo

We crossed a small ridge and dropped into Bowling Ball WashGoogle Earth (our name). It was a very small area but very cool. As Bowling Ball Wash merged with the main wash, we saw "The Creature" just ahead, and Hoodoos 5 just beyond that. The Creature looked more alien than real. I guess that's why it's also called "Alien Woman." The Creature is much more recognizable shot from the opposite side, but the sun wasn't going to change for us.

Bowling Ball Wash The Creature
Bowling Ball Wash The Creature

From The Creature, we saw Bisti Window Arch.Google Earth The window isn't very big, but we could shoot through it to a butte in the distance. The iron-colored cap layer that creates the window makes it stand out against the dull gray mudstone around it. It would be a great shot at sunset.

Bisti Arch

Here is where we made the mistake. We were only about 1/4 mile from The Egg Factory, probably the most photographed location in Bisti. I didn't realize we were that close. Instead of going directly to the Egg Factory, we hiked about the same distance to Hoodoos 5. This was a great area where the light was improving all the time we were there, but The Egg Factory would have been a better choice.

By the time we finishing shooting around Hoodoos 5, we were wearing out. We didn't have enough energy left to look for the Egg Factory ( we thought it was still farther away than it was) and then hike all the way back to the Explorer. We were about 3.5 miles from the Explorer, and the sun was beginning to drop. We decided to check out one more formation that was just across the wash from Hoodoo 5. It was a perched sandstone disc that wasn't all that impressive close up. But the formations around itGoogle Earth made up for it. An interesting pillar aligned perfectly with the rising moon, but the most interesting formation included a cowboy hat, an alien baby in a car seat, and Diego from "Ice Age."

Hat Hoodoo Bisti Hoodoo Diego
Cowboy Hat Alien Baby in a Car Seat Diego

It was 5:30 and sunset was 7:00. We still wanted to re-shoot the Hoodoos 3 area in golden light, so we started back. The lighting and the long shadows made everything more dramatic at Hoodoos 3. We even found a couple of formations we missed earlier. We shot for another 45 minutes before returning to the Explorer. We timed it nearly perfectly. The sun set while we were hiking back, and the eastern sky put on a light show as lightening began to flash across the clouds. Ten minutes after we reached the Explorer, it was dark.

On the drive back to Farmington, we stopped on a hill to take pictures of the lightening. I have a lightening app on my iPhone that I've been waiting to try out. It had no problem locating the lightening and firing, but most of the flashes were either too bright and general in lighting the clouds, or it was too dim. We wanted distinct lightening bolts, but there were very few of them.

When we got back to Farmington, we downloaded our images and went to bed. We were too tired to worry about dinner. We can still do the 7.5 mile hikes like today, but we have lots of aches and pains when we finish.