6 Best Sights in Northwestern New Mexico, New Mexico

The village part of the Aztec Museum & Pioneer Village contains more than a dozen late-19th-century buildings—a blacksmith shop, a schoolhouse, a wooden oil derrick, and a log cabin, among others—that convey a sense of life as it used to be lived in these parts.

If the kids need some indoor fun, try stopping by the E3 Children's Museum & Science Center. The interactive exhibits here include a shadow room, a magnet table, giant floor puzzles, and a role-play area. It's a low-key spot for the younger set to rest and regroup.

You can get an inkling of what the Four Corners area was like during the trading-post days at the Farmington Museum, in a modern sandstone building whose stonework is fashioned to echo that found at Aztec and Chaco ruins, and that also houses the Farmington visitor center. Landscaped grounds behind the building extend down to the Animas River—an ideal spot for a picnic. The museum presents art, science, Native American, and regional history exhibits throughout the year (the "Geovator," goofy as it is, simulates a trip deep into the subsurface stratigraphy of limestone, sandstone, and shale that yields oil and natural gas wealth for the region). Occasionally a traveling exhibit will require an entrance fee; otherwise, admission is free. There's a summertime evening music series on the terrace; call for dates and performers.

Despite its unabashed commercialism (announced by its many somewhat-over-the-top, retro-style billboard advertisements), this roadside curiosity, set squarely on the Continental Divide, easily merits an hour of your time—the short trail from the 1930s trading post (now the gift shop) just off NM 53 affords unusual vistas of blackened lava fields and gnarled juniper and ponderosa stands. It's about a 20-minute moderately strenuous jaunt up to the 1,200-foot-diameter crater of Bandera Volcano, which last unleashed a torrent of lava 10,000 years ago. An even shorter walk leads to an old wooden staircase that descends 100 feet into the bowels of a collapsed lava tube, where the Ice Cave never rises above 31°F year-round and has a perpetual floor of blue-green ice. The ice remains year after year because of the combination of the air flow patterns in the lava tube and the insulating properties of the lava itself.

with its immense colony of Gunnison's prairie dogs and family activities most weekends, anchors the east end of the city's lovely and revivifying River Corridor. A 3¼-mi walkway and bike path meanders along the Animas River; hidden, yet right in the center of town, it passes through Animas and Berg parks and ends just behind the Scott Avenue hotel strip on the west. The corridor contains 5½ additional mi of side trails for walkers, runners, cyclists, and wildlife- and bird-watchers, as well as a man-made, 300-yard-long white-water course. Join them at the center Tuesday mornings at 8 for guided bird-watching walks.

The mystique of wolves is powerful and Wild Spirit is one of the few places where you can see them up close, in large enough enclosures that allow them to behave somewhat naturally. The staff at Wild Spirit are focused on educating the public about the dangers of trying to keep these animals, even hybrid wolf dogs, as pets. Camping is allowed on the premises, if you have a hankering to listen to wolf howls, but it's primitive. Guided tours are offered at noon and 3  pm. The gift shop also sells snacks; it closes after the last tour. The on-site Howling Wolf Grill offers hot food on limited days.