Bisti Badlands, New Mexico
Last September I went on a 6,000-mile road trip around the western United States, and the highlight for me was the haunting alienscape of the Bisti Badlands, located three hours northwest of Albuquerque, NM. I timed my trip so that I'd spend the night camping in the badlands beneath the harvest moon, and it was otherworldly to see this place illuminated by the light of the full moon.
The Bisti Badlands are part of a 45,000-acre desert wilderness in the remote high desert of northwest New Mexico and are filled of miles of undulating mounds, spires, and other bizarre rock formations that look straight out of science fiction. They contain fossilized records from long ago when the area was a coastal swap of an inland sea and was once home to dinosaurs. A partial skeleton from a relative of the T-Rex called the "Bisti Beast" was actually discovered here in 1997.
They're very much off-the-beaten-path as there are no signs from any surrounding towns. Getting here involved researching GPS coordinates, turning down an unmarked “road” at a mileage marker and dodging large rocks / deep sand in a Honda Fit, hiking for a couple miles along desert washes and gullies using a GPS app, and avoiding rattlesnakes. There aren't any services available and cell phone reception is virtually non-existent.
It was truly incredible to spend a night here exploring the strangest landscape I've ever seen.
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