Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

Bandelier National MonumentBandelier National Monument is located in North Central New Mexico, between Los Alamos and Santa Fe in a rugged high desert at 6,500 feet. This altitude gives Bandelier a pleasant climate with warm spring days and cold nights. Bandelier, similar to Chaco Culture NHP, is a site of ancient great houses, but unlike Chaco there are cliff dwellings and cave dwellings as well. Bandelier is also a marvelous park for hiking.Our first day at Bandelier, on our way to an 8 mile hike to the Rio Grande River we stopped at the visitor center to observe a Native American Dance celebrating the presence of the Deer in their lives. The Dance and Drumming was very interesting, and the workmanship of the clothing worn by the dancers was exquisite.The hike took us past a group of "Tent Rocks" which are volcanic tuff capped by harder rocks. As the volcanic rock wears away the harder caps protect the tuff underneath forming various spires,needles, and hoodoos.The hike took us past many wildflowers as we wound our way down several thousand feet to the floodplain of the Rio Grande.One of the high points of this trip has been the opportunity to see many of the great rivers of our country. I can remember many years ago, in grade school, reading about these rivers that were so much a part of our history and development as a nation. I was always fascinated by them.Living in New England I often visited the Concord, the Merrimack, and the Connecticut rivers, but I have only recently begun to explore the great rivers of the west. I never pass up a chance to swim, or at least wade, in these rivers.We were fortunate on this part of the trip to have our friend Linda Regnier, Author of Best Easy Day Hikes, Santa Fe with us as guide. We did three of her hikes during our stay and if you are going to Santa Fe I can heartily recommend this book. Linda dropped by the bookstore to sign a few copies.We vistited some of the cave dwellings with Linda and her husband Jim after our Rio Grande hike.The day after Jim and Linda left for another commitment Cheryl and I headed out for a hike up Frijoles Canyon which is the main canyon containing much of the National Monument.The unrestored Great House is in Frijoles Canyon as well as the Long House.The Long House is essentially a long narrow Great House built on the ground against a high cliff with many excavated cave rooms adjoining it. We also went to the Ceremonial Cave.We accessed the Ceremonial Cave by a series of 4 very long, very steep, wooden ladders.There is a reproduction Kiva in the cave and it was cool, after seeing so many ancient Kivas, to be able to enter the Kiva.On another day we drove up to the rim of the Valle Caldera National Preserve and hiked down through the ponderosa forest lining the inside of the rim to the Caldera floor.The floor of the caldera is a huge meadow sitting in a bowl ringed by low mountains. The mountains are the eroded rim of what was once a vast volcanic cone. Can you imagine it?

Blue Bellied Lizard.

After the hike to the caldera we found a little used trail head to the boundary area between Valle Caldera and Bandelier National Monument.We found the usual wildflowers (isn't it wonderful that such things are "Usual" on this trip). These are Western Blue Flags, a small wild iris. They are often referred to by their state's name so I guess these would be New Mexico Blue Flags. The trail passed through a series of lovely meadows that once again led up to the Caldera Rim. As so often happens the naked beauty of this remote area drew us into a much longer hike than we had anticipated. Two hikes in one day and we barely had time to make it back for supper with our friends Ian and Jenny from Vermont who came to Bandelier as a stop on the maiden voyage of their new camper which they had just picked up in Chilliwack, British Columbia.On our final day at Bandelier we took a trip into Santa Fe to see the sights.It was interesting to compare the architecture of present day Santa Fe with the ancient buildings we had been viewing in Bandelier.Santa Fe is a marvelous city. Like many such places in the county, development and traffic are taking a toll on these historic and beautiful places, but if you can find the "Old Town" you will be richly rewarded.
NEXT: We head north to visit Telluride, Colorado and Dinosaur National Monument.

Chaco Canyon National Historic Park, New Mexico

Chaco Canyon is located in the middle of nowhere at the end of a 13 mile bad road. Maybe that's why few people go there. But, if you are interested in the Ancient Puebloan culture of North America, you should go there. We spent considerable time earlier in our trip exploring cliff dwellings in Arizona and Utah, now we were in the region of the ancient great houses.Chaco Canyon is believed to have been more a cultural center than a residential center and it is widely disputed as to how many people lived there. As our Pueblo Bonito guide told us, "What we know is that people lived here, and they built big buildings". The rest is conjecture. Chaco canyon is a flat canyon bottom between low mountains. It is very dry and sparse. The campground is a short distance from the great houses, under the canyon wall.We were fortunate to meet our friends Linda & Jim and Sue & Roger from Montana who had been to Chaco before and knew the things we had to see. First on the list was a tour of Pueblo Bonito, the best restored of the great houses.Note the many round Kivas within the walls. Here's a closer look at the floor of one of the Kivas in Pueblo Bonito.Pueblo Bonito was constructed in stages between 850 and 1150 AD and was abandoned around 1200 ADThe tours took us through the ruins and into many of the several hundred rooms of the great house.Having friends along gave us a chance to socialize again since leaving Whazoo and Lynn in Arizona and it was wonderful to spend some time with good friends.The next day we took a hike along the mesa top for views into the canyon from above which gives one a much better idea of the scope of these great houses.Not to mention a chance to stretch our legs and brush up on our canyoneering skills.
As has been the norm on this trip, there was lots of wildlife and we were again fortunate to see many desert blooms.On day three we biked out a canyon road to a less rehabilitated great house called "Wijiji. Once again the amazing workmanship of these buildings was obvious. You have to be aware when you look at this that it was built over a thousand years ago and is still standing 800 years after it was abandoned.We could even see where different styles (perhaps different workmen or varied loads of rock) were seamlessly integrated into the walls.On our last day we hiked farther up the canyon to see some petroglyphs and pictographs on the canyon wall.Here's a link to the National Park Service website if you would like more information on Chaco Canyon Petroglyphs. Our final hike was a short one to see Casa Rincanada, the largest Kiva in the canyon. This Kiva stands alone on a hillside a short distance from Pueblo Bonito and (who knows why) has it's two entrances perfectly aligned East to West.
NEXT: Bandolier National Monument & Santa Fe, New Mexico

Sedona, AZ and Cedar Mesa and Moab, Utah

Cheryl had been to Sedona about 25 years ago and wanted to see it again. Sedona, at 4400 feet, is situated in Red Rock Country of the Colorado Plateau. The transition from the desert to the mountains is abrupt and the roads up to Prescott, and then to Sedona twist and turn gaining altitude in huge steps. We would often find ourselves looking out the window into deep canyons many hundreds of feet below. I don't find that kind of driving scary, but one does have to keep ones eyes on the road. Alternate Route 89A into Sedona has a 40 foot length limit on trucks yet there seems to be no limit on those big class A campers that you always meet on a corner. Whew! We twisted our way through Jerome, a small town hugging the mountain and we were in Sedona. Sedona is beautiful, but like so many beautiful places today it is a victim of it's own success. There has been much development since Cheryl's earlier visit, with McMansions covering many of the bluffs and cliffsides. You have to look a bit to find "Old" Sedona, but find it we did and had a delicious Mexican dinner at Oaxuaca (pr. Wa-Ha-Ca). We camped at the Cave Creek Campground in the Coconino National Forest, which is located about 12 miles outside of town in Oak Creek Canyon. With only two days here we wanted to do a long hike on our full day and did the West Fork of Oak Creek trail into the Red Rock Wilderness. The trial wound through the Canyon, below magnificent red rock walls, for 3 miles to end (well, not actually end, just stop us) when the river and the canyon become the same width. We did take our hiking boots off and wade up the river (Cold...like the coast of Maine) for a couple of hundred yards before it became too cold and too deep to go on. We saw an endangered "Triangle Head Garter Snake" swimming up the creek. We seem to be on a roll with rare animals. Like North Conway, in our home state of NH, Sedona has had way too much growth in way too short a time, but like North Conway has, it will someday find it's roots again and, I'm sure, be an awesome place. We chatted with the owner of a fine bike shop in town and he said the political and social climate is changing from the old and established to the young and restless and this is a good thing. I guess we will give it a couple of years, then come back for a longer stay, Our days were sunny with blue skies and mid 80s, not too shabby.We then headed North through Flagstaff and passed through but did not stop at Monument Valley. We met Whazoo and Lynn on the road just as we were getting ready to enter Utah south of the Cedar Mesa Area north of Mexican Hat. We passed the "Goosenecks of the San Juan River" and headed up to Cedar Mesa. Getting on Cedar Mesa entails a large increase in altitude. In this area that is done on the famed Moki Dugway. The Moki Dugway is a gravel road with innumerable switchbacks rising 1100 feet in 3 miles. Utah recommends vehicles no longer than 28 feet...Good thing we're only 24 feet, eh?. After a quick stop at Muley point to ascertain that it was much too windy for camping we drove down a BLM road to find a campsite and prepare for our first hike to "The Citadel". The Citadel sits under a huge rock (We're talking basketball court sized rock here) at the end of a land bridge. We accessed the ruin from the opposite side of the canyon so we could see it, and where we needed to go, before hiking down into the canyon and out to the ruin. Ruin is a misnomer. While the Citadel is not a spectacular site overall, it is almost perfectly preserved and an excellent example of the workmanship of these ancient people. The builders of the Citadel are referred to as the Basket Maker people and are the antecedents of the current day Hopi in Arizona and Zuni in New Mexico. The land bridge scared the dickens out of me from afar, but turned out to be quite a bit wider than I thought. We moved to new campsite that evening where I taught my friend Whazoo how to make a proper S'More. The next day we hiked to a different ruin. The Moon House Ruin is much more extensive than the Citadel and encompasses 3 separate sites and over 40 rooms. Several styles of construction spanning several centuries are in evidence at the ruins. When you go places with our friend Whazoo, you really go placesand our last trip was up onto Comb Ridge via a really nice road that Whazoo had found along the ridge.We visited the Tower House Ruins on Comb ridge. Comb Ridge is a long escarpment running North South and pierced by East West canyons it's entire length. Many of these canyons contain ruins.As usual the Camera Crew (Whazoo and Cheryl) took several million pictures.

2 days of scrambling along cliff edges and climbing in and out of steep canyons left us ready for an early dinner and no campfire.We parted ways with Whazoo and Lynn the next morning and headed for Moab,Utah, farther north in the red rock country.Moab is a fun town, but busy and when we got there pretty much all the BLM campsites on the Colorado River were taken so we headed out Onion Creek road and found a site. We spent one day getting laundry done and the truck serviced then spent a day hiking at Dead Horse state park. This Utah State Park is located on a high mesa overlooking the Colorado River. The access to the mesa known as Dead Horse Point is only about 150 feet wide and cowboys used to drive mustangs out on the mesa to round them up. Reportedly some forgetful bunch left a few fenced in out on the mesa without water, thus the name. Sad name for a spectacular place.
The following day we took a hike out "Negro Bill Canyon" to see Morning Glory Bridge. Negro Bill was William Granstaff a cowboy cattleman and one of the first non natives in the Moab area. Granstaff had a ranch around 1870 in this canyon. The Natural bridge, reputed to be the sixth largest in the US is about 3 miles up the canyon and well worth the hike. This is a beautiful canyon and lots of flowers were in bloomOn our last day in Moab we hiked to Fisher Towers, a local red rock landmark. The towers are a series of isolated monoliths that are spectacular in both size and color.
We left Moab to head to Ogden, Utah for the weekend to watch our grandson Jack compete in a Judo meet.
We are such proud grandparents.

Next we drive the loneliest road in the country (route 50 through western Utah and Nevada) to visit Great Basin National Park.