El Malpais

I was pretty bored today, so I decided to head out to El Malpais (the badlands) about 70 miles west of Albuquerque just south of Grants, NM. It's in the "shadow" of Mt. Taylor, an extinct volcano. The badlands are made up of the remenants of a lava flow from the volcano, but there are some pretty cool sand stone formations in the area. I hiked the La Luz trail again yesterday (for the 4th time) and my legs were pretty beat, so I was going for the low hanging fruit, in terms of views. And there were almost no people in the area, so I didn't want to try to get myself lost in a place with minimal contact to the outside world. I would have to say though, that it is a really neat place to go, at least once.