After landing at the Grants airport Saturday morning, we rented a car (they didn't have any 4wd in our price range) and headed out to Wild Horse Ranch. We were merrily toodling down the dirt road when we encountered . . .
. . . a big massive mud pit. There was no way our 2wd was getting through this.
We could see the deep ruts in the mud where people had tried to go around. We realized that we shouldn't have been surprised. On the flight in we saw little lakes everywhere dotting the usually dry countryside.
Quite dissapointed, we headed back. Since we had nothing better to do on the way back to Grants, we stopped at the lava falls at the El Malpais National Monument. In the past we'd frequently wanted to stop here, but before we'd always been busy -- on the way to Grants to get something specific, and then wanting to get back.
It was a 1.1 mile loop trail, that I brazenly declared I would do. And I did do it, but my feet have not yet recovered, 4 days later.
There were these giant cracks in the rock everywhere. (We got some really spectacular shots of them from the air too; see the "other shots" section.)
You can see more cracks in this hillside.
Here's Jason at a giant collapse pit. We could have used someone on the far side for scale; it doesn't look so big in this picture.
Ropy pahoehoe!
These rock cairns marked the trail. As you can imagine, not much of a trail could be worn into the lava.
Here's a cairn nearly as tall as I am!
There were flowers EVERYWHERE in the area after all the rain. A few were even clinging to life on the rock.
We made it to the falls, but our only evidence is this single, blurry picture. There was actually a 5-ft cave that went back under the overhang. The "falls" are the two columns of rock in front of the cave.
I took a picture of these tiny mud cracks on the way out. That's a small tuft of grass on the left, and the shadow of my (small) camera on the right.