Ruins come alive

Aloha all,

we usually find American history more interesting than European history because it is not as confusing, IF you conveniently ignore the first 15,000 years of human habitation and start with the European contact. That’s easy to do in the east, where most of the historical sites are about the fight for independence, the founding fathers, the early presidents and the civil war. Very little of that in the Southwest, but lots of really old native American sites, so we had to broaden our horizon a little bit and try to learn something new.

We had been to several native American sites before, including Mesa Verde, but I had no idea how many of them there are until we came back to the Southwest with a little more time. I can’t find a number online, but there must be well over 10,000 sites, many of them over 1,000 years old. No worries, we did not even try to visit them all, but we did enjoy a very good variety of them in the last two weeks.

On a day hike into the very remote Kane Gulch in Southern Utah we had the whole canyon pretty much to ourselves. The cliff dwellings might not be quite as elaborate as others, but “discovering” them ourselves after hiking deeper and deeper into the canyon made for a fun adventure. 

Goosenecks State Park

Sometimes, I am surprised by the places I have never heard of. Goosenecks State Park is such a place. Why is this place not better known? It is literally three times as good as Dead Hose Point (which is already pretty spectacular), because the San Juan River makes not one, but three horseshoe bends here. They call it the best example of a meandering river, enough for us to meander down there and spent a night on the rim, with just a few other happy campers.

These landscapes are beautiful, but made this area very inaccessible to early pioneers, that’s why Southeast Utah was the last place to be settled and the last areas to be mapped in the US mainland. We reconnected with the history of the ‘Hole in The Rock Expedition’ in Bluff in the southeastern corner of Utah. We had first heard about this expedition by mormon pioneers two weeks earlier in Escalante, where they left in the fall of 1879. It took them six months to get to their destination. Now we got to visit the reconstructed settlement they founded in Bluff. Mormonism still sounds a little weird to me, but I have great respect for their industrious endurance: Back in 1879 for making the trip in the first place and nowadays for reconstructing the settlement and bringing it to life with a great audio tour about various members of the expedition and their life in the new settlement. 

The historic Mormon settlement in Bluff

If you want to see some world class native American ruins, but want to avoid the crowds of Mesa Verde, I recommend Hovenweep National Monument on the Utah/Colorado border. We hiked to some ruins that we had all to ourselves. It’s so quiet because it’s so remote, which also made for perfect conditions for a ranger star party. Skies as clear as on Haleakala; without the freezing temperatures!

Holly site in Hovenweep NM

The landscape in this area would be spectacular enough by itself, like the “Canyon of the Ancients” National Monument. But the fact that there are literally hundreds of centuries old archeological sites hidden all over the place make them even more special. But before you think we only like old stuff: The same day that we hiked the Canyon of the Ancients, I also upgraded my ancient iphone for a brand new one. The new phone takes such nice pictures, I have to stop myself from taking too many photos, just because everything looks so good on the new phone.

I have to admit, the new iphone camera makes
the inside of Joy look more spacious than she is.

I mentioned this before, but we just love that we are in no rush on this trip and we can take as long as we want wherever we are, without having to rush to get to some place at a specific date. So we spent three full days at Mesa Verde to do all the hikes, see all the sites and take all the tours we wanted. The “Cliff Palace” is one of the most impressive historical sites I have been to anywhere and the ranger guided tour of the “Long House” was one of the best tours we have ever been on. It really made those ruins come alive. I felt like we got a glimpse of what it was like to live there 800 years ago. Enough so that we know to appreciate that we live today.

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde NP

Usually, we like to stay at the campgrounds right inside the national parks. But not at Mesa Verde, where it is run by a concessionaire charging premium rates for dry camping while just outside the park we found a similarly priced RV park with a hot tub and spent one night at a brewery, where the camping was free and the beer was cheap. They also had good food and we just happen to walk in when their trivia night started. With five teams participating, we were tied for first place after two rounds. But the final round was all about horror movies, where we had to give ten wild guesses. Boy, were we surprised that we ended up in second place…until we found out that three of the five teams were tied for first, so we were actually second to last.

Game Night in Joy with Wasseem and Christine

We had done the old steam train trip in Durango on our road trip in 2008 aleardy. But luckily, Durango has a new mayor attraction for us: The son of our friend Sohani moved here, so we got to meet up with him and his girlfriend for dinner and a game night. We happened to stay at the RV Park of the Southern Ute tribe where he works.They introduced us to the fun “Pandemic” game. It’s a cooperative board game and we were actually able to save the world together. However, when we played again during his lunch break the next day, we were not so lucky and diseases spread around the world. The Southern Utes seem to be a very nice employer and a very successful tribe. The RV Park, resort and casino were brand new and well run and the museum very informative. Yes, they have been treated terribly like most native tribes. And yes, the US broke pretty much every treaty ever made with them. But they persisted and seem to be thriving by combining modern approaches with their traditional cultural roots.

Fall colors on Wolf Creek Pass

One of our favorite places from our first road trip were the Hot Springs in Pagosa Springs in Colorado. We now returned 11 years later and enjoyed another few hours of soaking in a dozen or so hot tubs by the San Juan river. From there we drove over the Wolf Creek pass with some spectacular fall colors to Taos in New Mexico. One of the long debunked myths about the Ancestral Publeoans is that they mysteriously disappeared from places like Mesa Verde. They did not disappear, they just moved south to join other tribes, like the one in Taos. So for us it was interesting to see what became of the people after they left Mesa Verde. The Taos Pueblo is still active today. Native Americans have lived there continuously for about 1,000 years, even though most of the tribal members now also have a modern home outside of the historic pueblo. Many use their traditional home as a business catering to us tourists. We appreciate that, because that’s one way to see the historical buildings from the inside and because that fry bread was really delicious. 

Taos Pueblo - inhabited since 1000 years

We joined a guided tour by one of the residents. It was interesting to learn how the adobe buildings are maintained, how the community is organized and how they combine modern life with their ancestral traditions, including the fact that many of them have no problem following the Catholic religion along with their native religion. She referred to herself as a “Publeoan Native”, but also mentioned that this is a very personal preference. To my surprise, the term “Indian” is still used, even by some Native businesses. I don’t find that term offensive; just confusing. It just seems so weird to use a term that came about because the first Europeans did not know where they were when they got to America.

Besides the very impressive Taos Pueblo, we also enjoyed the historic downtown area of Taos, the Kit Carson Home and Museum, the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a remodeled ’hacienda’ from time when this was still part of Mexico, an old adobe church, a lovely Peruvian dinner and a delightful Italian lunch. Lots of art in Taos, too, but we only peeked into a couple of galleries. 

Just over a pass from Taos we got to Las Vegas, the smaller one in New Mexico. For us, it was pretty much the opposite of Las Vegas, Nevada. We visited the “Dwan Light Sanctuary” which is a beautiful building on the Campus of the United World College, designed to reflect light to create a very peaceful and colorful space. 

Dwan Light Sanctuary

Instead of a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, they have several pots of hot water. The school maintains the Montezuma Hot Springs and thanks to their remote location, they can let the public visit for free without any of it being crowded at all.

Montezuma Hot Springs

Yesterday, we visited Fort Union in the northeastern corner of New Mexico. We have been to so many forts (including Fort Garland in southern Colorado a few days ago, which I even forgot to mention) that we might have skipped this one, if it weren’t run by our beloved National Park Service, which is always worth a little detour! Even though we did not get a guided tour as we had hoped, this was a very immersive experience. The ruins of Fort Union are now so remote and so quiet that it’s hard to imagine that this was once the epicenter of activity. This was the main fort at the end of the Santa Fe Trail. 19 other forts were supplied through Fort Union. Since it was built mostly out of adobe, only part of the building still stand. But the ruins, along with very informative signs, illustrations and a film (which we liked so much that we watched it twice) gave us an idea of the scale of this operation. Not bad for such a remote area of such a young nation. It also helped that the ranger at the visitor center was not just willing to answer all our questions, but did so enthusiastically.

We also finally got to play a round of disc golf again. The course was ok, but not the best…but we did find two very cute wild turtles. Actually Sandra almost hit one of them with her disc.

Tortoises on the disc golf course

Now we had to flee enchanting New Mexico because for tonight they predict freezing temperatures. We made it to Amarillo in the northern Texas panhandle. Check back right here in a week or two if you want to find out whether we survived the cold front. It’s supposed to warm back up by the weekend, so we are pretty sure we will make it to Oklahoma to check out our 50th state before returning to our still favorite state in mid November.

Aloha from Amarillo,

Chris & Sandra