On the way out the next morning, we tried to escape the dirt road of dread by exiting through the road we hadn't entered through, but unfortunately they're both a wonderful uneven 25 mile-ish stretch of earthy treachery. However, in our search for alternative escapes, we met a sweet maintenance man and his little cart buddy who gave us advice on where to get gas and hand drawn map of directions directly onto the trash can of how to get to Bisti Wilderness. He reminded me of a grandfather that had lots of excellent wisdom just waiting to be bestowed upon us. On the way out, we could only get an oldies station that played their songs on loop, and the radio host sounded like it could have been him. Rollin out of Chaco, windows down, Nancy Sinatra telling us all about her walkin boots and our fingers crossed that my tires could hold out, we headed toward town.
When I was a little girl, my mother and I used to go on little adventures when my older sister was in school. While we were in the car driving, we had a little sign of luck that we would see that was like a little secret just for us. We would be driving along and spot a house on a truck passing us as we'd go. Since then, every time I see a house on the back of a truck making it's merry way along, I think of her. The funny thing about this time, was that right around the time that Alia and I spotted the house, the old "Davey Crocket" song started playing on our lovely throw back radio station. This is another of the few things I remember as a child. We had an old tape deck that had this song on it and I remember playing it over and over again. I haven't really heard it since then, until that moment.
After our daily gas/ice/coffee stop, we headed to Bisti only to find another damn dirt road. A little bit of hesitation set in, but we continued on. Thankfully, this one was much shorter and the giant construction vehicles barreling down it were very kind to little Rabbits like us. That was a good sign.
When you arrive at Bisti, there isn't much in the way of signage or trails or information at all really. We were one of 3 cars parked in the dirt next to a barbed wire maze to enter on foot. One of the main areas for hiking was closed for conservation, so we ended up at another spot. The entrance is very tight squeeze. Since I wasn't as prepared with information on this as I should have been, we wandered around the hills a little bit taking in all of the other worldly rock mounds. With the temperature around 105-110 F, it wasn't the most comfortable exploration we had done, but this is pretty much the average heat we've come to expect. Still, it's hard to keep the images of being fried into the ground to a crispy death if we lose our way, so we were very careful to not lose sight of our landmark.
Eventually, I wandered off towards another spot across the way and Alia hung out around a dried up riverbed. Walking upon the interesting alien wasteland area, I found what I was looking for. Huge formations carved from water and wind surround you as you walk around through the sculpted earth. Being the only ones around, it's very easy to imagine yourself in a barren wasteland post human world. Or maybe that's just me and my guilty pleasure of end of the world young adult hunger games type series. I could definitely picture some fight-for-the-human-race type drama happening here.
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