Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Nov. 13- 15, 2014

I knew that Anasazi ruins dotted the entire Colorado plateau, and I'd always wanted to re-visit one of the most impressive, Mesa Verde, but it was hundreds of miles east--and we were headed south and west. However, when I read about Chaco Canyon in House of Rain by Anasazi expert Craig Childs, I immediately decided I had to see it. I've always liked exploring abandoned places--and this was one of the premier abandoned places in the Southwest. Even better, it is one of the most out-of-the-way abandoned places, as well, at the end of a 20 or 30 mile mostly-dirt road, and 50 miles or so from the closest population center, Farmington, NM. Anyone who goes there really wants to go there; it's not on the way to anywhere else. The ruins (5 or 6, I think) are spread out along both sides of a 10 mile long canyon, and we drove along the road, stopping at each ruin, and walking through it. Very few other people around. The most extensive of the ruins, Pueblo Bonito, was built in stages between 850 and 1150 AD. That sounds impressive, and it is, but even more amazing is that Anasazi architects planned for at least a 3-storey structure before they laid the first stone. Archaeologists know this because the ground floor walls are so thick. Imagine planning for a 300-year build. Such continuity of purpose--and from a culture that did not even have the wheel!

Here's Pueblo Bonito, along with bits of some of the other Chaco ruins:

Click on any photo to see it larger

Click on any photo to see it larger

Great Kiva at Pueblo Bonito

Great Kiva at another of the ruins

Pueblo Bonito

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Pueblo Bonito

Click on any photo to see it larger

Click on any photo to see it larger

Ground floor of 3-storey Pueblo Bonito

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Great Kiva. Not sure which of the Chaco ruins.

We spent most of the day walking through the several Chaco ruins...and drove back to our campsite feeling a little overwhelmed.

On the way out of Chaco, driving through miles of huge sky and desolation, we passed another ruin, this one comparatively recent:

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...from the dirt road...

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...closer... Once I saw the doll, I wasn't sure I wanted to go inside...

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...but I did.

Click on any photo to see it larger

Click on any photo to see it larger

Can't imagine living here.

...front door.

Next stop: Las Vegas.  Or so we thought.

That's all for now. Hope everyone had a wonderful Xmas and a Happy New Year.

Monument Valley

Nov. 9 & 10, 2014

For about 4 or 5 days, at our Goosenecks camp site, we'd been seeing the spires of Monument Valley peaking up above the horizon:

Monument Valley spires on the horizon

So one morning we had breakfast in Bluff, Utah at the Twin Peaks Trading Post...

Good food in Bluff, Utah

...and headed for Monument Valley:

Approaching Monument Valley

Monument Valley belongs to the Navajo Nation, and they've built an extensive Visitors' Center with gift shop, restaurant, and headquarters for several types of tours. We could have chosen a guided tour of the 17-mile loop through the Park, but you pay quite a bit of money to sit in a covered, but open-sided jeep or flatbed truck with 10 or 12 others, while the Navajo guide drives the truck and narrates through speakers. Now, this sounds OK, but the road is dirt, and the tours leave every 5 minutes or so, which means each truckload of tourists eats the dust of the truck in front--for the entire hour-long drive. Of course, they also see the sights through the same dust. The Navajo guide, by the way, sits in the cab of the truck--with windows up. Quite a few tourists in one truck had bandanas tied around their faces; they looked like bandits or terrorists. 

Instead of the tour (or driving ourselves, another option), we decided to do the 3 1/2 mile hike around Mitten Butte. It was as empty as the drive was crowded--and no dust. On the way to the trailhead, though, I spotted a few Navajo hogans that were open and wandered inside. I expected nothing much; after all, these were basically mud structures. However, once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was surprised by the beauty in the roof supports:

Logs woven together to provide support for the roof

I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this 'woven logs' technique is the same roof support structure that the Anasazi used in the great Kivas at Chaco Canyon and elsewhere 1000 years ago.

On to the Mitten Butte hike:

Note sliver of sky upper right center; looks like a knife or scimitar.

Almost all the way around Mitten Butte

John Wayne is out there somewhere...

By the time we finished the hike it was nearly dark: too late for the loop drive. However, there was still time to set up the tripod alongside the other 30 photographers and shoot Monument Valley at sunset:

We drove back the next day to take the tour, but decided the guided tour was not for us. Instead, we paid the $20 to drive our truck along the same loop. It was magnificent. And even though we had the windows up and the air on "recirculate", we still got dusty. We can't imagine what torture those tourists on the guided tours must have endured! Wait! Actually, we can: we were caught outside in a dust storm so bad that all I saw when I looked at Leah, whom I was touching, was a brown shape. (My hair actually changed color--from white to a kind of sandstone. Stayed that way, too, until I washed it.) Here's a photo of the petering-out dust storm, taken after we scrambled back inside the truck:

Tail end of dust storm, Monument Valley

Clearing a bit...

In tact,  but a bit dusty.

Hope all is well with you...

More from Goosenecks...

Here are some photos from the Goosenecks Park area, but not from the Goosenecks, themselves. Forgot to put them in last time:

Liked the patterns and colours in the rocks

...a closer look a little later.

That's all from Goosenecks. Definitely a place we'll return.

Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park

Nov. 4-10, 2014

Moab and Ken's Lake were wonderful: We hiked and explored the town and La Sal Mountain Loop, had great food, and got a trailer part replaced (the electric tongue jack failed). But we began suffering from 'hitch itch'--the urge to see what's over the next hill--so hit the road for Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park, Utah, where we'd heard from many that the sites were ''really nice".

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We agree. View from our site at Goosenecks. 

Not far from our site. It's easy to see that the San Juan river has carved a series of 'goosenecks' because we're camped on a cliff 1500 ft above it.

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Reading in the morning. Quiet...very few other campers here, even though the cost is a reasonable $10/night. Our site, though, is beyond the state park boundary, on BLM land, and so was free.

What's not to like!

Our routine: Get up, have coffee, maybe read, then walk...or maybe run back along the approach road:
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Morning walk on approaching Goosenecks State Park

Next, maybe another walk, this time along the rim:

Our site in the upper right corner

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Long way down. Looks like we're right on the edge, but we're really about 20 feet back.

Sometimes, after walking/running and maybe some photography, we'd drive the 10 miles into Bluff, Utah for breakfast or brunch at Twin Rocks Trading Post:

Pretty good restaurant, especially for a town of only about 260.

On the second day at Goosenecks we noticed a small class B/C motorhome, a Phoenix--one you never see, and one with a superb reputation for build quality. Anyway, we ended up meeting its owner, Gail, a new full-timer, and recently retired air traffic controller. She showed us her rig and she's really done a good job of customizing the interior. I had 'rig envy'.

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Inspecting Gail's rig

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Gail and Leah, in front of Gail's Phoenix. Note flexible solar panels leaning on rig, far right.

But then she saw my camera and asked what it was. "A Nikon D7100", I answered. She allowed that she would love one like it, as it was light and capable. "Oh", I said, "What camera do you have?" "A D810"! (This is Nikon's latest and greatest, a 36 megapixel full-frame DSLR.  Now I had camera envy, as well. She not only has a good camera, she takes fantastic photos, too. Turns out we have quite a bit in common. She also follows several bloggers, just as I do. And one of them is Tioga George, now retired from full-time RVing, but the inspiration for many new full-timers. She said she read his blog from the beginning to the end, a total of nearly 10 years of daily blog entries! I did the same, but started following him when he began blogging, in 2003 or so. If you follow the link above, you'll see his most recent post. However, the interesting stuff begins in 2003, so click on 'Archives", and navigate to 2003. Start there.

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View of our camp site from Gail's

On our walks along the rim, we noticed that other campers had created various types of rock art and rock structures, perhaps inspired by the Anasazi rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs) on rock walls all over the 4 corners area.

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A spiral or maze, very well done, at our camp site on the rim at Goosenecks...

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...perhaps inspired by spirals like this one, chipped into the rock near Bluff, Utah, about 1000 years ago. 

Spirals, we later learned, are among the most common types of rock art in Southwest, and are thought by some to symbolize migration or abandonment of one place for another.

On one side of our camp, the spiral...

...on the other a large stone fire pit...

...which we put to good use at the end of the day.