Our hike on Sunday was one that we found out about from my friend Andrea. Actually, we were supposed to go on this hike with her and a bunch of other people on on Thursday morning, but I completely forgot about it. I'm not sure how I managed to forget about it between talking to her on Monday and leaving the house Thursday morning. Anyway, we decided to give the hike a try on our own Sunday morning, and we absolutely loved it. I think it's going to be our new favorite hike for little kids in the Albuquerque area.
I'll put the directions for it at the end of this post if you're interested in trying it yourselves. It's very much an uphill hike to get from the trailhead to the waterfall, but it's mostly shady, not very far and easy terrain. I estimate that it's about half a mile, maybe a bit more, and it took us about 30 minutes with the little boys. It would have taken us 15-20 minutes as slow-hiking adults without kids. Tommy (6) had a hard time pushing to the end, but he made it. Charlie (3) walked about 2/3 of it and spent the rest of the time on Daddy's shoulders.
The best part about the hike is that there's actually fast-running water, a cave and a small waterfall at the end. That's not something you see very often in this part of New Mexico. It's well worth the effort, and the boys felt like they found something cool at the end of all the work. Tommy was whining and dragging his feet the last quarter of the uphill hike...untill he saw the water. Then he miraculously found great reserves of energy and went bounding across the running water, jumping from stone to stone with vim and vigor.
Hiking back down was super easy. It probaby took us 15 minutes and was downhill all the way. We only rested once on the way down, and that was just because David was setting a pace that was way too fast for me. The boys probably could have made it all the way down without resting.
We probably spent an hour at the actual falls. David took each boy up to the top of the falls in turn. Then we figured out that if we backtracked on the trail a bit and took the "Sandia Peak" branch of the trail we would end up at the top of the falls instead of the bottom, so we did that too. That was probably a mistake. The boys had both already been to the top by their bush-wacking, rock-climbing, Daddy-hoisting shortcut. That alternate stretch of trail was in full sun and very steep. We should have just waved goodbye to the falls and headed down the trail while everyone was still happy. In the end, there were tears and David ended up hiking the last bit with 70 lb Tommy on his shoulders and 35 lb Charlie on one arm. He was still way faster up that hill than I was.
All in all, I think this is a great hike for little kids. If you want to do it yourself, head East on I-40 out of Albuquerque. Take exit 175 toward Tijeras. It's a double exit, and you want the right branch of the off-ramp, the one for Tijeras. Then you'll turn left and go under the freeway. Be careful not to get right back on I-40. Instead, you'll want to turn right onto a small residential road named Arrowhead Trail. The road splits and you'll need to take the left branch of this road up the hill. Continue on until the road dead-ends at the trailhead. From the trailhead, you just start hiking up the trail. There aren't any signs saying "Travertine Falls" until you're almost there. Don't worry. You don't have to hike all the way up to Sandia Crest, the ultimate end of this trail. Just turn around once you've played around at the falls.
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