El Malpais — Lava Badlands, La Ventana Arch & the Big Tubes

A short graded road off Highway 117 climbs to the edge of a broad rampart of pale Zuni sandstone that forms the eastern wall of the badlands. From the rim you look out across a black sea of frozen lava — the McCartys flow, one of the youngest in the monument at roughly 3,000 years old — stretching to the cinder cones and the distant blue bulk of Mount Taylor. There are no railings and no marked trail; you simply walk out along the slickrock to whatever ledge draws you, peering into potholes and wind-carved hollows in the stone. It is the single best orientation to the scale and strangeness of El Malpais, and superb in the low, raking light of morning.

Farther south along Highway 117, a huge free-standing span of Zuni sandstone arcs out of the cliff face — La Ventana, 'the window,' one of the largest and most accessible natural arches in New Mexico. A flat quarter-mile path leads from the roadside picnic area up a small drainage to a viewpoint beneath the arch, where the scale of the opening becomes clear against the sky. Ambitious walkers can scramble higher up the wash toward the base of the sandstone wall. The surrounding Cebolla Wilderness and the sheer cliffs of The Narrows make this stretch of the drive one of the most scenic in the monument.

On the west side of the monument, reached by the rough dirt County Road 42, the Big Tubes area holds a network of collapsed lava tubes — long, cathedral-like caves left behind when the surface of a lava river cooled and the molten interior drained away. From the trailhead a cairned route crosses jagged basalt to entrances like Big Skylight Cave and Four Windows Cave, where you can descend onto a floor of frozen lava beneath collapsed ceilings, some holding ice year-round. A free caving permit from the visitor center, a helmet, and at least three light sources are required; the route-finding across the flows is genuinely demanding and easy to lose. High-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended for CR 42. It is the wildest, most adventurous experience in the monument — plan conservatively and turn back at the surface caves if the road or the terrain feels beyond your setup.