Hiking in New Mexico (Guest Post)

As travel begins to open back up, most of us are still avoiding large crowds, which makes hiking a great way to fuel your wanderlust.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my year of hiking throughout Indiana, but now I’m excited to share a guest post that allows us to mentally venture out west.

Michelle Pryor is a fellow travel blogger, and she offered to walk Traveling Tanya’s followers through her family hike in New Mexico.

The terrain in New Mexico is quite different than it is in Indiana!

Michelle is on a mission to inspire kids of all ages to explore the outdoors and has created an app to do just that! No matter where you choose to roam, download Hiking Bingo before you set out on your next hike, and you will be in for an extra special outdoor adventure!

How to Avoid the Crowds in Tsankawi, Guest Post by Michelle Pryor

Hello! I am Michelle from www.HikingBingo.com, and I’m constantly in search of how to avoid crowded places to travel and hike.

Is it possible to see cool stuff and not be surrounded by tons of people?

The answer is yes!

While it takes a bit more time and effort to find these hidden gems, the payoff is worth it. My goal is to make the process easier for you.

At the end of last summer, our family visited Tsankawi Village which is part of Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, although it is not co-located with the main Bandelier park. In the past, we had driven by the sign for Tsankawi multiple times and never stopped. Of course, the first time we decided to pay it a visit, Tsankawi was closed due to the pandemic. But luckily, we found the park to be open on our next trip to the area.

We visited Tsankawi the first week it reopened to the public and not many people knew it was open yet. Make sure you check the park’s website to ensure Tsankawi is currently open due to the changing restrictions. The website also has great directions for finding the start of the trail.

I recommend visiting on a weekday or possibly early morning or later in the evening to avoid the crowds.

When we visited, the temperature was also quite hot which may have deterred a lot of people from hiking. We had the trails to ourselves minus a father and his son who passed by us at one point hiking in the opposite direction.

If you are visiting Tsankawi during the summer, be sure to bring plenty of water as most of the trail is open and exposed to the sun. If you are visiting in winter, be sure to dress warmly and be aware of recent snowfall, which may make the trail more difficult to navigate.

Once you are ready to hike, you will be rewarded with an amazing trail that weaves among the ancient ancestral pueblo village of Tsankawi. The trail is perfect for adults and young kids as well as it is only about 1.5 miles roundtrip.

If you are hiking with kids, you’ll want to make sure your kids can climb a ladder as there are three located along the trail. The ladders help make the trail a super cool adventure for kids. There is also one section of the trail that is located near a steep drop-off, so you’ll want to keep little ones close by.

Overall, the views, pueblo homes in the rock walls, and portions of the trail which wind through narrow rock passages are extremely fun to explore. It’s worth donating a dollar to take a trail map guidebook from the kiosk at the beginning of the trail.

The trail has various markers along the way and the guidebook provides some interesting historical information about each site. More importantly, it kept our son totally engaged in the hike as he was responsible for navigating the trail based on the “map” guidebook!

One final note: pay attention to the warning about watching out for thunderstorms located near the trail head. The weather was beautiful when we started, but some afternoon storms developed over the mountains behind us. The approaching storms made for a very rapid pace over the last bit of the trail for us!

You can read more about thunderstorms and hiking on the Hiking Bingo blog!

I wish you the best of luck in avoiding crowds while hiking in 2021.

Whether you visit Tsankawi or other less crowded trails, I’d love to hear about places you’ve traveled to and hiked as well. Then I could include them in my blog to share with others! You can send any pictures or information from your favorite Off the Beaten Path places to my email: ContactUs@HikingBingo.com. Tag us @HikingBingo on Facebook and Instagram and feel free to use #HikingBingo!

You can also download my Hiking Bingo App for free on the App Store to create a more adventurous and fun hiking experience for kids of all ages! An Android version will be available in April, 2021.