Kickin' It in the Desert

Examine the photo and the clues we've provided below to pinpoint this location. Choose right and you could win a $100 BSA Supply Group gift card.

I check the name on my park brochure a second time. Yep, this is a national park. You wouldn’t know it from looking around at the place—this desert is, well, deserted. In fact, I’m told it’s one of the least-visited national parks in the United States.

Just 300,000 people come here each year. That’s about a third of the visitors who stopped by Yellowstone in July alone.

But I don’t mind the isolation—especially with views like the one awaiting me at the top of the tallest peak in the mountain range. A short, two-mile scramble to the summit yields a panorama that invigorates me with its peacefulness.

Back on the main trail, I turn the corner and see ahead an odd-looking rock formation. Though it looks out of place at first, a second glance reveals a shape that’s quite fitting for this part of the country. I know that tonight’s campground, near a natural spring, shares its name with this rocky tower.

I set down my pack and stop to shoot a quick video to show my troop when I get home, my camera’s lens zeroing in on the spire and then panning across this undisturbed desert. Now, do you wonder: Where Am I?

DO YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? If the scene shown and described looks familiar, enter our “Where Am I?” reader contest. We’ll take all of the correct answers and select one entrant at random to receive a $100 gift card to the BSA’s Supply Group.

Ready to enter? Use this form to send us your guess. The deadline is Jan. 4, 2010. Good luck!

Congratulations to our September-October 2009 Where Am I? winner, Jim Weeden of Fort Mill, S.C. Jim correctly told us that the mystery location was the Cimarroncito Reservoir at Philmont Scout Ranch. Jim will receive a $100 BSA Supply Group gift card. The winner was selected at random from a pool of 577 correct responses.