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I’m beginning to get obsessed with ‘Waldo Canyon’. This area is pretty close to Santa Fe and has received some fame last year when a painting that was stolen from the Georgia O’Keeffe was found there. In the article it mentioned that the person who found the painting was looking for “fossils and spear tips”. That little hint got logged in my brain and I always wanted to go there to explore the area.

Well, I’ve been there several times now and just yesterday I went again. Here’s a small satellite map with some annotations:

I came from I-25 and drove about 10 mins into the canyon. There you’ll hit an arroyo that you can enter to your left. Right at the beginning of the arroyo are some shale hills to your left. You can find areas with fine black “sand” (which is actually broken down shale) and some places where you get huge sheets of shale. Those are sometimes paper thin and you can grab layer after layer from the rocks.
Those shale areas “smell” like fossils. I found some shells and something that looks like a petrified tube sponge. I’m certain that there is more and bigger stuff hidden. It’ll require more visits to find good spots.

Deeper in the arroyo there is a huge shale rock:

Shale rock 40ft high

This thing is about 40ft high and hangs over the arroyo in parts. Here’s a closeup of the shale on this rock:

Shale closeup

What’s interesting about this particular rock are some embedded “things” that stick out like sore thumbs from the uniform material. Those things look like big round blobs and I’m certain that this is pretrified organic material, however I have no clue what it is. It’s certainly not a big shell. Here’s one of them:

Petrified blob inside shale

This thing is about 2ft in diameter and you can see some crystalization in the center which seems to indicate organic material. If anybody knows what I’m looking at, please let me know.

Yesterday I also climbed one of the higher hills next to the arroyo. It was pretty windy and I was afraid that the thunderstorm in the distance would move over the area while I was climbing up there. Guess I was lucky. You get a nice view of the Oritz mountain range from up there:

View towards Oritz mountains

I’m not too sure where public land ends and private land starts. It is possible that I’m not allowed to be there, but then there are no signs and/or fences that stop you.
If you’re planning to go there, please be careful, because I believe it’s not always safe to be in the arroyo. There are lots of places littered with bottles and empty gun shells, which seems to indicate that the area is being used as a shooting range at times:

Recreational stuff