Petroglyph National Monument - Albuquerque, New Mexico

I was out in New Mexico for a business meeting this past week and a co-worker and I made a side trip enroute from the airport to our meeting site to Petroglyph National Monument. Business trips usually only consist of seeing airports and hotels, so whenever we have some spare time we try to see something of the area we are in. We weren't exactly dressed for hiking around to see the petroglyphs, but we were able to see many of them in one area that was an easy walk in our business attire.

The Petroglyph National Monument is part of the National Park Service and their website explains that "Petroglyphs are rock carvings made by pecking directly on the rock surface using a stone chisel and a hammerstone. When the "desert varnish" on the surface of the rock was pecked off, the lighter rock underneath was exposed, creating the petroglyph. Archaeologists have estimated there may be over 25,000 petroglyph images along the 17 miles of escarpment within the monument boundary."

At first when we were walking down the path we thought we were walking to an area where we would see the petroglyphs. It wasn't until we stopped to read a marker along the path that we realized the petroglyphs were on the rocks all around us. We just had to slow down and look in every direction to find them.

The area was full of these huge rocks. This is looking up from the path we were on.

 

And here are some of the petroglyphs we saw along the way. It was cool because you could actually see the hammer marks on some of them, which were estimated to be at least 600 years old.

 

 

We thought this was a bird at first, but then we decided it was probably a fox.   

 

A turtle?

 

 I really liked this one of the feet.