Days 10 through 14- The National Parks of New Mexico and Arizona

Dry…Hot…Silence…Serenity…Unworldly…Perfection. What I have experienced in the past few days in the deserts and mountains of the southwestern parts of the United States are beyond words, yet here I am writing a blog about it. Whatever is written in this blog will do my experiences no justice, because even a published poet and writer such as myself cannot describe the beautiful mix of tranquility and madness, the perfect blend of calm and chaos, the equilibrium of ugly and utopia, that I encountered in New Mexico and Arizona. In a nutshell, one must experience what I have for themselves in order to fully appreciate it, but I can only hope that these words and pictures will offer enough evidence to prove to you that some of the most amazing natural places in the entire world can be found in these two states.

After leaving my 3 night stay in Texas, I arrived into Carlsbad, New Mexico, where I spent several hours exploring the Carlsbad Caverns, which are the biggest caverns in the entire country. I opted to take the natural entrance into the cave rather than take the elevator down, so my journey began with a 45 minute walk through a zigzag maze all down a very steep 80 story decent to the bottom of the cave, which was very hard on the knees, but thankfully I’m doing this trip at 22 years old instead of 62. I have been to several caves throughout the eastern part of the US before, but the Carlsbad Caverns are unlike any other. Taking the natural entrance into the cave allows you to truly appreciate and comprehend the massive size of the cave, and the natural beauty of the various stalactites and stalagmites left me speechless. Spending several hours down there makes you forget what planet you are even on, because I have never seen anything else on planet Earth so surreal, yet magnificent at the same time that looks like the things I saw in the cave.


After leaving New Mexico, I was off to Arizona. First I briefly went to Montezuma’s Castle, where you can gaze through the windows of the past into one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. This 20 room high-rise apartment, nestled into a towering limestone cliff, tells a 1,000 year-old story of ingenuity and survival in an unforgiving desert landscape. Marveling at this enduring legacy of the Sinagua culture reveals a people surprisingly similar to ourselves.

I then visited Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. With one of the world's largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood, multi-hued badlands of the Painted Desert, historic structures, archeological sites, and displays of over 200-million-year-old fossils, this is a surprising land of scenic wonders and fascinating science. This place is called “the painted desert” for a reason; the hills look like someone took a paintbrush and went over them with various shades of reds, oranges, blues, and grays. I said to myself that this was the most beautiful place I have ever been to, and that was true until I drove a little up north to the Grand Canyon.






When I walked to the cliff’s edge and saw the canyon spread out before my eyes for the first time, my jaw literally drop and I shook my head in disbelief as a tear of joy fell from my eye, because nothing this beautiful should even exist on this planet, it’s simply just not fair. Honestly, the Grand Canyon is probably just as big as or maybe even bigger than my entire home state of Connecticut, so I wish I had more than just a couple hours to see more of the canyon. But what I did see of it was the most beautiful thing my eyes have ever laid upon, and I will definitely be coming back in the near future to explore more of it for several days, including hiking down to the base of the canyon and whitewater rafting on the Colorado River. But for my first time there, I was quite content with just sitting on the cliff’s edge and taking it all in.


I was amazed and how drastically different the climate, scenery, and landscape alters in Arizona by just driving a little over an hour up north. In southern and central Arizona, there are many cactuses and sand covered mountains, yet up north, in Flagstaff and above, I felt like I was right back at home in New England or upstate New York, because of all the pine trees, greenery, snow covered mountains (yes, in June), and quaint little mountain towns. The beauty and diversity of Arizona impressed me a lot and I can definitely see why many people come here to live after they retire. Hell, I may have to retire extra early and move down here soon myself, because I fell in love with the state and didn’t want to leave.



Like I said before, there’s not much else I can say about my experiences at these 4 national parks, because words would not suffice the experiences. I can only try and let the pictures do some of the talking, but my only advice is to get out and explore these places for yourself, because you will then feel the way I feel and be enlightened, inspired, and awakened like I have to the true beauty and tranquility of the desert and mountains of the southwest. Out here, I was able to clear my head, but it was only filled with more questions about the origins of the planet, because I do not think that things this beautiful were made my accident over time; I think that some sort of God out there must be an amazing artist, and He used the southwest as His canvas.