3 Best Sights in Northwestern New Mexico, New Mexico

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.

West of Farmington, at U.S. 491 (though the odd map will still refer to this road by its old number, 666) and U.S. 64, just southwest of the town of Shiprock, 1,700-foot Shiprock Peak rises from the desert floor like a massive schooner. It's sacred to the Navajo, who call it Tse'Bit'Ai, or "Rock with Wings." No climbing or hiking is permitted. The formation—sometimes referred to as a pinnacle—is composed of igneous rock flanked by upright walls of solidified lava.

Window Rock Monument & Navajo Veteran's Memorial Park, at the base of an immense, red-sandstone, natural arch—truly a window onto the Navajo landscape—is a compelling exhibit dedicated to all Navajo war veterans, but in particular to the Code Talkers of World War II. Designed in the shape of a sacred Medicine Wheel, the spiritual aspect of this profound memorial is apparent to all.