Worth a DetourAlbuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
New Mexico
Nine days in early October
Hundreds of hot-air balloons rise together at dawn. Arrive in the dark for the mass ascension.
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New Mexico
11 places and 27 sights on our lists.
Places in New Mexico
Worth a Detour
Worth a Detour
Worth a DetourCarlsbad Caverns National Park
New Mexico
A vast limestone Big Room, one of the largest in North America, reached by trail or elevator, and hundreds of thousands of bats at dusk.
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Worth a DetourChaco Canyon
New Mexico
The great ceremonial center of the Ancestral Puebloan world, with huge stone great houses in a remote desert canyon.
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Worth a DetourRoute 66
Illinois to California
The old Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway; its best-kept stretch of diners and neon runs across Arizona.
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Worth a DetourSanta Fe
New Mexico
Adobe buildings, galleries on Canyon Road and New Mexico's green-chile cooking.
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Worth a DetourTaos Pueblo
New Mexico
A multi-story adobe village, continuously lived in for about 1,000 years by the Taos people, and a World Heritage Site.
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Worth a DetourWhite Sands National Park
New Mexico
The world's largest gypsum dunefield, 275 square miles of dazzling white waves in New Mexico's desert, great for sledding.
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If You're Nearby
If You're NearbyAlbuquerque
New Mexico
Home of the Balloon Fiesta, with an old Spanish plaza, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and a long tram up Sandia Peak.
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If You're NearbyEl Santuario de Chimayó
New Mexico
An adobe chapel in the hills north of Santa Fe whose "holy dirt" draws pilgrims from far and wide, many walking for days to arrive on Good Friday.
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If You're NearbyLos Alamos and Bandelier
New Mexico
The secret wartime town where Oppenheimer's team built the bomb, beside Bandelier's cliff dwellings.
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If You're NearbyRoswell
New Mexico
Where something crashed on a ranch in 1947. Alien-shaped streetlights, a UFO museum and a playful love of the unexplained.
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