Alamo Mountain Petroglyghs Campout

Last weekend 22/23 May 10, myself and a couple of folks from Military Jeepers (James and Josh) headed down to Alamo Mtn in south central NM to check out the Petroglyghs and Campout for the night. Alamo Mtn is located east of the Ft Bliss reservation near the NM/TX line out on the Otero Mesa.

I met with them at Hwy 54 and County Rd 506, approx 25 miles south of Alamogordo, NM.

On our way down, this fella (female Pronghorn Antilope) decided to run along side my Jeep for a good 1/4 mile or so.

James wanted to check out a lake he had seen on a map in the area, well as you can tell it's pretty dried up right now. I was here last Nov and it was much larger.

We reached our destination and got ready for our hike up to explore the mountain.

You have to hike pretty far up before you begin finding them. There are several small panels and many large ones. This one is medium sized with several drawings.

These Petroglyghs are approx 400 years old, and apparently there was water in the area.

These last two were some of the larger panals that we can across.

While exploring near the north west side of the mountain you can see the old Butterfield Stage Route Stop. It is just walls of stacked rocks now.

The fowers were in bloom all over the mountain.

After several hours exploring, we headed back to set up camp, dinner was cooked and a nice fire was made for the evening. We sat and shot the breeze until bed called.

The next morning came and we decided to head back up the mountain and search another area. We found several more petroglyghs all basiclly the same as Saturdays. After a couple of hours it was back to the vehicles and time to start heading home.

On our way home we ran across more Antilope and actually came across a small heard of Orax. The Orax were brought to the White Sands area of NM many many years ago for hunting.

The Otero Mesa is a large expanse of BLM land in South Central NM (1.2 million acres). We stopped for a short break on the way out, but still had a long way to go.

You can see more photos of the trip here: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/577772266nxNTEA

You can read more about the Otero Mesa and the people who made the Petroglyghs here:http://www.oteromesa.org/otero-mesa/history-of-otero/tigua/

Well another great trip in the bag, nothing better than spending quality time with great folks, thats what this lifestyle is all about. So until next time.....................................