My first inspiration to visit New Mexico was an online photo of Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Park. My immediate thought was that I had found a mini version of Cappadocia right here in my own country. Friends who had also visited Turkey were all equally surprised that the landscape of Cappadocia was not as completely unique as we'd believed. I showed the photos to Brian and he readily agreed that a summer trip was in order.

That was months ago. Now I couldn't do the trip with him; couldn't hike with him, wake up next to him, navigate the roads with him...and I didn't want to do it with anyone else. My second afternoon in New Mexico, I visited the Tent Rocks alone.

The gravel road from the entrance was extremely rough, meaning at just 7-8MPH my tiny compact car shook with teeth-rattling intensity. In the late afternoon, the sky was grey with impending rain and I had a feeling sunset wasn't as far off as I would like...but there was no way to speed up this process.

Tent Rocks ended up being just what I expected, although the park was small overall compared to the various tufa regions of Cappadocia. It also didn't appear whole societies had carved out cave homes here. But the soft porous peaks brought back wonderful memories of Turkey nonetheless.

At one point on the mile-long Cave Loop trail, I passed an Indian-from-India family and offered to take their photo. I'll admit I snapped it fairly quickly, but I was simultaneously amused and horrified that right in my presence the father made a disappointed face and muttered in Hindi how bad my photo was.

The rain began right as I reached the namesake cave on the back peaks. This park didn't seem to be very popular, and instead of clear signs like the ones at Bandelier, the trails were marked with colored ribbons tied to trees. Not an uncommon method, but there was never a key at the trailhead explaining which colors were which, and the trail started with 2 colors. I wasn't sure where in the loop I was, so I simply turned back rather than trying to stay on the loop. I had been hiking for less than an hour; the rain hit hard just as I got in my car.

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