San Pedro Parks Wilderness
August 6-12, 2025
A trip to San Pedro Parks Wilderness was months in the planning, but one thing or another kept getting in the way. How do such old retired folks manage to stay so busy? Finally in early August there was a week-long opening. By then the monsoon was on break and it was 97°. Time to launch the escape pod!
Sand Canyon
We met our buddy Ken at one of our favorite camping areas near El Malpais National Monument. Even at 7000' it was plenty warm — in the upper 80s. But there was a nice breeze and it cooled down nicely at night.
We squeezed in a morning hike to a wonderful panel of petroglyphs.
These glyphs with their striking geometric patterns remind me that Acoma Pueblo is just over the rise.
Is the alien giving us the double flip off?
The Scream?
Four-footed traveling companions included Badger, Madeleine and Elio. Over the years, they've adapted to RV life and seem to enjoy the extra attention they get in exchange for being confined in a house on wheels. Madeleine "pole dancing".
Sunbathing.
Meanwhile Elio just wants to go outside, eat grass and roll in the dirt.
Rito Resumidero
We were delighted to find a lovely spot atop a knoll in a dispersed camping area along the Rito Resumidero.
Eager to catch a glimpse of running water, Dennis and I made a beeline for the creek, and our spirits sank when we found it was bone dry. But the forest was lovely and there was a trail, so we kept walking. A short while later, a tiny creek trickled in from the west, joined by seep after seep until there was a respectable flow.
Cutleaf coneflowers, yarrow and purple aster dominated the streamside vegetation, and every flower hosted clouds of western fritillaries.
The canyon walls rose up and we could hear water thundering below us. We carefully picked our way down to the creek, where we found a trail leading upstream.
And there it was, a multi-level waterfall in a narrow slot with a nice pool at the base!
We returned with Ken the next morning, catching the falls in filtered sunlight.
Resumidero Falls pours out of a hole in the rock and tumbles 70' into a deep and mossy slot.
We were on a mission to see if we could make our way to a cluster of waterfalls at the confluence with Rio Puerco. The faint path disappeared, and we continued downstream, crashing through the brush and clambering over endless deadfall. We reached the creek, flowing strong and clear over a bed of pink granite.
We popped out just ABOVE what was certainly one of the major pour-offs, but there was no way down.
Back at camp, it was Friday afternoon and the weekend party-goers had arrived en masse. One of our neighbors was blasting chingadero music, while another raced his dirt bike around and around the camping area, stopping frequently to rev the machine to its max — a sound best described as a high-pitched scream. A half hour of that was enough for me to lose my mind, and I crashed through the woods to unleash a stream of epithets.
It was time to go. Fortunately we found a very nice campsite several miles away, down a two-rut track and well hidden from the road. But our tormenters tracked us to the new location, and returned after dark to serenade us with their shitty-shitty-bang-bang music. "Resumidero" means "drain" or "sewer" in English. Well now we know!
San Pedro Parks - East Side
We left the area and completed a quite lovely circumnavigation of the San Pedro Park Wilderness, passing by the intriguing Tea Kettle Rock before settling near San Gregorio Reservoir.
Ken and Badger relaxing at our lunch stop.
Elio stealing my chair (photo by Ken H).
When there's a squirrel, but you're too fat and out of shape to haul your a$$ up a tree!
San Gregorio
Our camp at San Gregorio. Not another rig in site, hallelujah! Late that afternoon, we did a very nice loop hike through the woods below our camp to an unnamed creek.
The creek was dry except for a few puddles. The bank was all aflutter with western fritillaries feasting on cutleaf coneflowers.
Adejeania vexatrix was another critter enjoying nature's bounty.
And this is surely the time-traveling portal from "Outlander".
Last but not least was the final hike , a roughly six-mile round trip trek along the aptly named Las Vacas Trail.
San Gregorio Reservoir is the main draw here, but the water level was very low, and cattle grazing nearby had trampled the shoreline and filled the pock marks with their pee and poop.
The trail climbs gently through a mixed aspen, doug fir, pondo, white fir and blue spruce forest to a high rolling plateau that tops out a 10,400'.
We ate lunch in an open park-like area where summer wildflowers abounded.
Shrubby cinquefoil.
Curlyhead goldenweed.
Fremont's squirrel.
Golden-mantled ground squirrel.
Five days with no internet! Catching up at Cuba's finest internet cafe.
Another fine adventure comes to a close.
