Alien City
Exploring the Alien Throne and the other strange formations in Alien City was my top priority for this part of the trip. The challenge was that there wasn't a lot of information on how to get there, and the roads seemed pretty sketchy. The first 18 miles from Highway 371 were on good, signed dirt country roads. The next 4 miles were a double track that left the county road and seemed to head off to the opposite horizon. There were no signs or any markings to provide a clue of where it was going or whether we were on the right road. But it was relatively smooth and easy driving. The final 2 miles were very rough in places where 4-wheel drive wasn't mandatory but high-clearance was somewhere between comforting and necessary. I was glad we had both. I had spent hours going over the one decent description that I could find and then converted it to a route in Google Earth that I downloaded to our new GPS in the Explorer. It was all worth it!
Shortly after we started hiking toward the Alien City, we met a German couple who were returning to their SUV. How do these people find out about these isolated locations in the Southwest? They pointed to the Alien City on the horizon and gave us a heads up about a deep wash we would have to cross. Then, it was a mile hike across open range land to Alien City. We sometimes found the tracks of others, but there was no semblance of a trail.
Alien City is a small mesa with washes radiating in all directions. The mesa is less than 100 feet high from its highest
point to the wash surrounding the hill and is about a mile in circumference at the base. But walking up any of the washes
toward the center was like walking into another world. It would be a great place to film a science-fiction movie. I'm sure
that's how it got its name.
We initially photographed along the top edge of the mesa
and were impressed with the interesting hoodoos there. We didn't realize that we were only on a fringe of Alien City and
these formations were just the "teasers." We continued around the north edge of the mesa and dropped down into the
wash where we saw a huge sandstone pika. We only had to hike a little farther down the wash before we saw the Alien Throne
and the other main features of Alien City. From that point on, every turn revealed new, strange, and bizarre hoodoos.
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As we hiked back to the Explorer, we enjoyed the light show as the sun set behind the rain clouds that skirted us on the north. We had watched them all afternoon; ready to make a run for the Explorer if it looked like we would get rain. After all, the first thing we needed to do to get back to the highway was cross a 1/2 mile-wide, sandy wash.
We escaped the wash, the very rough portion of the road, and the double-track to reach the county dirt road before dark.
When we finally reached the paved highway, we watched the lightening flash along the western horizon. It was a very good day.
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