The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a yearly festival of hot air balloons that takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA during early October. The Balloon Fiesta is a nine day event, and has over 500 balloons each year. The event is the largest hot air balloon festival in the world. The azure skies above the verdant Rio Grande Valley became a surreal canvas of color during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. This year’s festival drew pilots from 22 countries around the world.

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The Santa Fe Indian Market® is a 93-year-old Native art market. It is the largest and most prestigious juried Native arts show in the world and the largest cultural event in the southwest. The Indian Market attracts 150,000 visitors to Santa Fe from all over the world. The Native American Clothing Contest is one of the most beloved and anticipated events. The contest includes categories for traditional and contemporary Native American fashions; featuring children and adult participants with award prizes in many categories.

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All of this wilderness is located in New Mexico and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area is a remote, high desert region of colorful, low relief badlands, split by many branched dry washes and containing innumerable eroded rock formations, fossils and pieces of petrified wood, including complete trunks up to 100 feet long. The unusual and ever changing scenery is a product of time and the natural elements. There are two major geological formations found in the wilderness, the Fruitland Formation and the Kirtland Shale. The Fruitland Formation makes up most of what the visitor will see while in the badlands where weathering of the sandstone forms the many spires and hoodoos (sculpted rock) found throughout the area. The Kirtland Shale contains rock of various colors and dominates the eastern part of the wilderness.

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The Carlsbad Caverns National Park contains 113 of more than 300 known caves beneath the surface of the Chihuahuan Desert and Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas. All caves was formed as sulfuric acid dissolved the surrounding limestone. The most famous part of this National Park is the show cave, which is open to the public and tourists can hike by themselves via the natural entrance. National Park was first designated a National Monument on 25 Oct 1923. Carlsbad Caverns was also designated a World Heritage Site on 06 Dec 1995.

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Located at the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert of Southern New Mexico, lies the amazing national treasure known as the White Sands National Monument. The closest major airport is in El Paso, Texas, a two hour drive away. The White Sands covers 275 square miles. About half of those 275 square miles are within the White Sands National Monument. It is also called White Sands Desert but this is not a desert of sand but a desert of gypsum. You will find there the largest concentration of white pristine gypsum sand in the world. The best way to explore the park and taking sunrise and sunset pictures is to camp there.

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The Very Large Array also called VLA consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin, New Mexico. The radio antennas are massive (230-ton) and each 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The scientific beauty of the array is that the antennas act as one. The VLA can cover frequencies between 0.073 and 50 GHz, and wavelengths between 400 and 0.7 centimeters. The VLA stands at an elevation of 6970 ft (2124 m) above sea level. It is a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The total cost of the VLA was $78,578,000 dollars in 1972.

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