New Mexico Tourist Attractions
Vacation Ideas

The location is Chama, New Mexico just South of the Colorado border, due North of Albuquerque.

This is real old-time railroading with sharp curves, trestles, tunnels and steep grades plus scenery that hasn’t changed in over 100 years.

In August of 2010 the Cumbers & Toltec Scenic Railroad will celebrate it’s 40th year of bringing the old days back. There will be special train rides and behind the scenes tours and more.

These Caverns have over 100 individual caves which lie under the Guadalupe Mountains and there are a couple of ways to see them. You can take a tour which is guided by a park ranger of you can go it alone with an audio guide.

If you’re a first timer the guided tour is the best plan so call ahead and make reservations. Be alert to the fact that on occasion you will need to crawl through some tight places to don’t bring you 85 year old grandmother along.

There is a special treat on summer evenings. That’s when the 300,000+ bats fly out of the caves at dusk to feed on the night’s banquet of insects. July and August are the best months for this bat-show. Of course, the bats have to return at dawn so you have two chances to attend this show. Along with touring the caverns there are other activities such as camping and bird watching.

Keep in mind that the first week of October starts the nine days of the International Balloon Festival where you will see the sky filled with hundreds of colorful (and we really mean Color-Full) balloons.

Being there as a spectator during the festival is an amazing experience. However, going up in a balloon is the real excitement and the real reason you are considering the inclusion of ballooning in your vacation.

Evenings, as the sun retreats behind the horizon, the festival morphs into Balloon “Glowdeos”. The balloons are inflated but remain grounded while the propane burners create luminous light bulbs in many shapes.

There are several places around Albuquerque that provide balloon tours. Be sure to bring your camera, everything about ballooning is highly photogenic. You might also have a look at the International Balloon Museum in Albuquerque.

The argument was stifled by the CIA which came to Roswell and locked all the evidence away in one of its secret vaults. The crazy thing is that it actually happened near Corona, some 80 miles away from Roswell.

That’s enough of a history lesson. Let’s talk about a vacation in Roswell NM. There is one historical remnant of the 1947 event and it’s the "International UFO Museum and Research Center".

This center continues to have a high interest for tourists and visitors. So, If you are traveling anywhere near Roswell, you might want to swing over and find out the latest thinking about UFO’s. Talk about stories to bring home! Independent of the UFO history, today Roswell is a modern city with colleges, cultural museums, etc., and is a really great place to visit.

This old building is still an active souvenir shop and restaurant. There are so many interesting things to do and see downtown that a walking tour with a guide would really be a great idea. You could see the Capitol Building, the San Miguel Mission Church, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and the Palace of the Governors.

The Rio Grande river runs though the town so it was natural that whitewater and rafting businesses should start up here in Santa Fe.

There are a variety of river activities on the Rio Grande and Chama rivers so check out these possibilities. Just think, here’s a New Mexico tourist attraction where you have some highly interesting walk-to history very close to some highly exciting water sports. A match made in vacationer’s heaven.

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