Driving through New Mexico and Mesa Verde

After a quick look at the rest of the Painted Desert, we drove east to New Mexico and then turned north and drove into Colorado. Mostly just a lot of desert to see. The trains out here are enormous. At the left you see four engines and in the picture below that bumpy white strip at the bottom of the cliff is the one hundred twenty plus cars the engines were pulling. Most of those are double-decker tractor trailer sized cars. In addition most of the traffic was trucks. We move a lot of stuff around this country.



We were driving through Navajo Indian Reservation until we hit Colorado; then it is Ute Indian Reservation. I'll have to do some research when I get back but the Utes look more prosperous than the Navajo. Mostly there was miles and miles of flat land with every few miles a small cluster of houses and trailers and a few range cattle eating the grass. As we drove north we saw a few trees which are a sign of water. The houses got nicer and the grass looked fuller. Eventually we saw irrigated fields. Dad said that they are drilling deep wells and draining the aquifer which is making things worse in the rest of Colorado.


Every few miles we would see a monolith of some sort sticking up. We could see them for miles ahead because the land is so flat. And Dad took so many pictures of them that he used up both of his fully charged batteries before the end of the day.


These are two that we saw. Now can you imagine what it would be like to have that in your front yard? we also saw what New Mexico is doing with their ARRA money - paving two more lanes so that 491 is four lanes wide instead of two. By the way - this was our cloudiest day so far.

We got to Cortez, Colorado and had lunch and drove into the Mesa Verde National Park. Paul's $10 Senior Pass is working like a champ. We paid for it at the Grand Canyon and have not paid a cent since.

After you pass the gate at Mesa Verde, it is 20 miles of climbing twisty road to the museum and visitor center. We passed through a sign for 7000 feet elevation. We started down the trail and we had a first look at the Spruce Tree House village on the left. All of that under the cliff is rooms that the Anasazi Indians built. There are 100 rooms and 100 people lived here. Many of the rooms were for sleeping and working, some were for storing grain, and there were round kiva's for hanging out and ceremonies. The Anasazi were farmers and grew their crops on top of the cliff where you see those trees. This house was inhabited for about 100 years until around 1300. These Indians had lived in this area for 700 years before they started building the cliff dwellings. At the end of the time there was severe drought so they picked up and left - moved south into Arizona and their decendents are the Hopi. The Navajo took over this area but they were hunters and not interested in the cliff dwellings. So they were just left alone until discovered in the 1880's.



We are getting pretty fearless. We walked all the way down(100 vertical yards) and got a close up look. That is me in my purple fleece looking into a kiva and reading a brochure. I'll bring it back to show you. And, yes, we walked back out. You know that because you are reading this post; there is no wireless internet in the cliff dwelling.



This is a picture from the left side of the cliff dwelling looking all the way back to the right. Most of the structure is as originally built. In a few places where there was extensive damage and the dwelling was about to collapse, the Park Service rebuilt the walls using original techniques.

We drove to another site and looked at The Cliff Palace. It is the largest cliff dwelling in the park. If any of you get out here while you are young enough, go down into that. You have to climb down stairs and ladders to get to it. By this time the camera was done so instead here is a link to read more about it and see pictures (from Wikipedia, of course).

And finally Dad was having a great time taking pictures of the trees, bushes and grasses because they are all labeled. But his favorite sign is this one:


And finally, finally while driving through Mesa Verde we saw huge plots of burned forest. It seems that when the land was not managed at all, there were often small fires which kept down the underbrush. Then there was a time when all fires were put out immediately so the underbrush did not get burned out. Then they got into a cycle where there was so much underbrush that fires could not be controlled. This is the result.



We are back on schedule and off to Arches National Park. Only 150 miles to drive. Love you, Mom/Susan