Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness In New Mexico: Like Another Planet

Have you ever visited somewhere that made you feel like you weren’t on planet Earth? Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area in New Mexico is like that.

We’d wanted to visit Bisti (pronounced Bis-tie rather than Bis-tee) earlier this year when we spent a few weeks in Bloomfield, NM. There was a large snowstorm though and I’d read online that the road leading to the Badlands could get pretty hard to pass when it’s wet if you didn’t have an SUV or high clearance vehicle, so we decided to give it a miss with our 2004 Toyota Corolla.

Shae, Truffles and I got a second chance to visit the site recently when we stayed for 10 nights in nearby Farmington. We decided to visit Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness at the end of our stay when we moved on from Farmington down to Gallup as it was along the route on NM-371.

It turns out that our concerns about our car getting stuck back in February/March might’ve been unfounded. There were two roads leading in to Bisti; one of them seemed to be a dirt road that passed through a wash, so I can certainly imagine that route getting muddy and impassable when wet.

However, the route we took didn’t seem like it would encounter the same issues. After turning off NM-371, we took a different dirt/gravel road to the parking area that didn’t seem like it’d end up in bad condition after snow and/or rain.

The parking lot was a decent size and had quite a few RVs and camper vans there.

Next to the parking lot were some pit toilets.

At the end of the parking lot there’s a noticeboard and a sign in sheet. It’s free to visit Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness – the sign-in sheet is just to help identify visitors who might have gotten lost in the wilderness area.

There’s fencing all around Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, so there’s a gate you have to pass through to enter.

From there, it’s a bit of a walk to get to any rock formations. There were some ahead to both the left and right; we decided to head to the right as it looked like there were far more interesting-looking formations on that side.

There’s very little shade when visiting Bisti, so be sure to bring plenty of water with you and wear sunscreen if you’re exploring in the summer.

Soon enough we reached some hoodoos and just wandered around exploring.

One of the great things about Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is that it’s pet-friendly. That meant Truffles was able to join us and she had a wonderful time checking everything out.

The strange rock formations and hoodoos found throughout Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness are made of sandstone, silt, mudstone, coal and shale and are the result of erosion over the course of thousands of years.

That erosion continues today and you can see the potential for new gullies being formed.

In various places throughout Bisti you can see petrified wood. There were also shards all over the ground that looked like petrified wood had shattered everywhere. It turns out those are small pieces of clay that were burned during a centuries-long coal fire many years ago.

There aren’t any trails at Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness – you’re just free to roam and explore wherever, obviously being careful not to damage any of the formations in the process.

There were many fascinating formations where limestone tops were precariously balanced on rock beneath that’s eroding far more quickly.

One of the most interesting formations was the one below that looked like it could collapse at any time. For all I know though, it could potentially last thousands more years!

From below it looked like the fossilized footprint of a giant.

We were careful where we walked so as not to damage anything, but it’s possible to head up some larger rocks to view the formations and hoodoos from above. Erosion over the years not only caused the strange formations but gullies and canyon-like areas too.

Climbing up provides some spectacular views, but it often means you have to walk back down from where you came as it’s not possible to descend the other side.

The Bisti badlands are such a strange place to wander – it’s like you’re exploring another planet at times.

 

Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is enormous – 45,000 acres in fact. We spent a couple of hours exploring the site and only got to see a fraction of what it had to offer.

With it being such a massive space, there’s the potential for getting lost. We didn’t go far enough out for that to be a problem as we could still see the covered picnic area in the parking lot from a distance (the photo below doesn’t show it too well, but it was visible from where we were). However, it’s worth having Google Maps on your phone and/or a compass to make sure you can find your way back if exploring further out.

Final Thoughts

Shae, Truffles and I had a fun couple of hours checking out Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness near Farmington and Bloomfield in New Mexico. There are tons of unique rock formations and hoodoos throughout the site and I can imagine we could return several times and still discover new things to see.

As a free, pet-friendly place to visit, it’s an interesting place to spend some time if you’ll be on the western side of New Mexico.