Dispatches From the Parks: El Morro National Monument
Being from the mixture of suburbs and northeastern woods that is Connecticut, I don’t get to spend much time in a desert setting. So I have quite the experience anytime I get the chance to visit an archetypal desert setting. I got to do just that last month when I visited El Morro National Monument. El Morro is a quintessential desert oasis setting. Sitting near the New Mexico-Arizona border and just a couple of hours drive from Albuquerque, El Morro is kind of in the middle of nowhere but isn’t that difficult to get to.
My trip to the park began with a stop at the park entrance sign, which is right at the main road before a side road leads you to the actual park. El Morro was the first park of many that I visited on my trip with 9am-5pm operating hours as they did not want anyone hanging around at night to potentially damage or disrupt the park’s artifacts. Having arrived a little before 9am I needed to kill some time before the gates opened so I took as many pictures as I could by the park sign.
Once the gates opened, I headed straight for the visitor center. The visitor center is hard to miss as El Morro is on the shorter side when it comes to parks and the visitor center guards the park’s two hiking trails. In order to help protect the area, you need to check in with the park rangers at the visitor center before you go on either of the two hiking trails. The visitor center is also quite small with just a ranger station, a park gift shop and a small exhibit that you can easily go through in five minutes.
The trail I chose to hike was the Inscription Trail, which is the smaller of the two trails. The Headland Trail was only partially opened as the high elevation of the park meant there was still too much ice on portions of the trail on the early spring day that I visited. The Inscription Trail brings you to many of the highlights in its short half a mile layout though. The trail begins with a nice view of the El Morro rock formation and brings you closer and closer to the formation until you are underneath it. Hidden within the formation is a water oasis, which means as you get closer to the rock formation you see more vegetation and hear more bird songs. I was able to see multiple species of birds on my hike including goldfinches, which stuck out with their yellow color. Besides the water oasis, the rock formation also showcases the many inscriptions that Native Americans, Spanish explorers and American settlers have left over the years. It’s amazing how great the condition of the inscriptions are as the National Park Service has done an unbelievable job at preserving this area. With the pool of water and the history that came with it on full display it was hard not to be memorized by the area underneath the rock formation.
Other than the two hikes there isn’t much else to do at El Morro unless you utilize the campground down the road. As a quick morning adventure, though, I couldn’t do much better than my visit to El Morro.
