The park has about 3 miles of interconnecting trails and a marked nature trail, which offers easy access into the Cibola National Forest. Trails wind through the forest, circling the main section of the park, where the campground, office, and other facilities are located. Easy to moderate, the trails are fairly flat and bordered with rock and shrub oak. Three trail sections lead to a gate into the national forest, where hikers and horseback riders can access miles of forest trails into the Manzano Mountains.

Most park visitors will see wildlife of some sort, such as squirrels, gophers, and raccoons. Mule deer are often observed from the trails or the campground. More elusive, although you may notice their tracks along the trails, are elk, bears, and mountain lions. Everyone sees and hears a wide variety of birds, and close to 200 species have been observed in the park. These include mountain bluebirds, warbling vireos, rock wrens, violet-green swallows, mountain chickadees, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, downy woodpeckers, western kingbirds, black-chinned sparrows, song sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, black-chinned hummingbirds, red-tailed hawks, and both golden and bald eagles.

The Manzano Mountains play an important role as a raptor flyway. Some birds may fly 200 miles in a day and several thousand miles in a season. The park has a field checklist available to visitors who enjoy bird watching.

Nearby, in the town of Mountainair (18 miles southeast of the park), is the Visitor Center for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. The monument's sites, which range from 8 to 26 miles from Mountainair, contain the ruins of 3 Native American pueblo and Spanish mission sites. These sites date to as early as A.D. 900 to 1100 and contain impressive architectural remnants of both the Prehistoric and Spanish colonial occupations.