Mesa men

We had explored the largest of the Chacoan Great Houses, Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl, and we wanted to do something different on our second day in the canyon. Our campground neighbors, Tom and Kathleen from Santa Fe, had recommended a moderate hike on top of the mesa to the Pueblo Alto and New Alto sites.

I wondered if the boys would be able to withstand a desert trek, even for only a few miles. I shouldn't have worried: They held up marvelously.

The trail started at Kin Kletso, a late house, after a walk down a gravel road from Pueblo Del Arroyo. It zig-zagged up the cliff, a rough path at best. We made it rougher by taking a wrong turn halfway up, going left instead of right, and gingerly picking our way along the face. Our camp neighbors, coincidentally coming back from a long hike on the canyon floor, noticed us and shouted. It seems we have a talent for wrong turns.

Back on track, we came to perhaps the coolest part of the hike: a narrow crevice that climbed up to the mesa top. We squeezed through, Michele and I as excited as the boys by the Indiana Jones-like passage.

On top, we walked along the edge of sandstone rippled and carved by wind and water, admiring the view. Hot breezes blew on us as we followed cairns marking the way. At one point, after curving around two small canyons, we came across two smooth basins -- called peck holes -- scooped out of the mesa by the Chacoans for, probably, ceremonial use.

Eventually, we arrived just above Pueblo Bonito for a fascinating birds-eye view of the complex. Then the trail turned for the stretch up to Pueblo Alto, the terminus for the Chacoans' north road. The sun bore down on us, and we walked more slowly past yellow-blossomed prickly pear and the occasional lizard. Water breaks grew more frequent. The wet towel draped on my neck had long dried, but Michele periodically moistened the boys' ones. Close to the pueblo, we crossed a stretch of excavated Chacoan road, a patch just floating in a sea of sage and cacti.

When we topped a last ridge and beheld the windswept remains of Pueblo Alto and New Alto, alone on the mesa top, we felt like real explorers discovering a hidden ruined city. That's not to say there wasn't some grumbling, but the expedition's morale picked up when the leaders decided to head back and not brave the loop around the crumbling walls of the unexcavated pueblo.

New Alto, a better-preserved, smaller neighboring complex, stood like a lonely sentinel in the heat. Before leaving. we checked it out, surprising a solitary hiker who sat in the late afternoon sun contemplating the northern vista of distant mesas, buttes and mountains. There she was, enjoying the silence until a noisy family barged in. After a few pleasantries, we left her to her view.

Heading back, spirits improved with every step drawing us closer to air conditioning. Flagging before, we perked up. We got to the Pueblo Bonito turn. Then came the peck holes.

And then, disaster almost struck.

John Michael screamed in horror. A gust had whipped off his beloved range hat, sending it skittering toward the mesa's edge. Worse, he started chasing it.

Things got a little crazy. Without thinking, I yelled for John Michael to stop, and bounded after the tumbling hat, my lens cap popping off. I'm not sure I was exhibiting any better sense chasing a $50 hat toward a precipice. But I was in dad overdrive. Fortunately, the hat stopped in a little ledge, a few yards from sending us both in a freefall.

To his credit, John Michael had not only stopped, but he had retrieved my camera lens cap after it popped off in all the excitement. He got his hat -- and a breathless reminder to hold on to it tightly in the wind.

In comparison, the rest of the hike was uneventful, though the mesa crevice was just as fun going down, and we managed to follow the trail for the rest of the descent. Rosenblum family 1, desert hike and malicious, hat-stealing wind 0. We drove back to camp, in air-conditioning bliss, with proud, sweaty smiles.

Monument Valley and the Burger King

We're in Kayenta after a side trip to Monument Valley. Chris took lots of pictures. Now he's in the Burger King taking more pictures. Pictures in a Burger King? Stay tuned!

Now it's onward to the Grand Canyon!

Navajo Rez

Stopping at the Red Mesa Trading Post. Chris needs something with caffeine. I waited in the car with Ted while Chris and Jem checked out the shop. A cute puppy stared at me. Looked part coyote.

Mesa Verde

Leaving Mesa Verde. Difficult to get a handle on the relationship between here and Chaco, but I think we've got it. On our way to Grand Canyon. Will blog more when we get there provided we get cell reception. Keeping our eye on the fires.

More to come

We're leaving the hotel now to head to Mesa Verde. I'll upload the Chaco photos as soon as I can, and then Chris will post about our EPIC hike. We also have some tales to tell about visiting Salmon and Aztec sites. But we have to get going now. Please check on the older posts for new pictures.

Chaco

I was last at Chaco at least 22 years ago and a lot had changed: the road in, the visitor center, the archaeological interpretations. However, the campsite where we sent up was exactly the same. And, of course, the Chacoan Great Houses which have endured for 1,000 years, were as I remembered them.

Beginning some time around 850 A.D. and continuing until some time around 1130 A.D., the Chacoans, the ancestors of the modern pueblo people, built villages, great kivas, roads, signal towers, and at least a dozen great houses along the Chaco wash. The Chacoans were gifted astronomers and stone masons. The masonry in the Great Houses such as Pueblo Benito and Chetro Ketl is breathtaking. More than 200,000 trees were carried from the distance Chuska mountains to build these three and four-story cities, some with as many as 500 to 650 rooms and numerous kivas. The Chacoan trade network stretched from the California coast, from which they obtained shells, to Meso America, as evidenced by the presences of macaws, copper bells, and recently even traces of chocolate found on pottery. More turquoise was found in a single burial here than in the rest of the Southwest combined.

The boys learned so much from the campfire talks and ranger guided tours. And so did I. Most archaeologists seems to agree that Chaco was more a gathering place for the peoples of the San Juan basin rather than a major population center. What were consider "outliers" in my day are now seen as part of an integrated Chacoan system.
The Chacoans built ramps and stairways up to prominent mesas and built huge cairns for massive bonfires. Thus, just like in the scene from Lord of the Rings, when the signal fire is lit at Minas Tirith to signal Aragorn and Theoden waiting hundreds of miles away in Rohan, so the real Chacoans could almost instantly send messages across their world from Gallup in the south to Mesa Verde in the north.

The boys also learned that much of the every day lives of these engineers, astronomers, masons, farmers, and politicians is lost. Pottery sherds and flakes from stone tools, plus a few tantalizing fragments on textiles, only hint at a rich and varied material culture. The boys asked dozens of intelligent question of the park service guides and visiting archaeologists about trade, domestication of turkeys, farming, irrigation, masonry styles, and so on. In fact, a University of Texas professor leading a summer field trip of college kids was overheard chiding his students that a 9-year-old asked better questions than they did. He also told me that he would not want to get into an argument with Ted about anything because he would lose.

The part that the boys will remember best, however, is exploring Pueblo Benito at high speed until they each knew as well as any park service professional and better than any adult visitor. Zipping through doorways that seemed built for them, they experienced this Great House as a whole just as the original Chacoans did.

The road not taken

So we're headed toward Chaco, up Highway 550, the sun climbing.

We have a full tank and bellies. We're going to get to Chaco by noon for a camp site. Everything looks as bright as the baking desert around us.

Ah, the desert. Michele has told me about the rough path to Chaco, 26 miles of teeth-jarring, unpaved road that can't be crossed in the rainy season. Before the trip, I thought about this. I had visions of trundling along, pieces falling off our car, buzzards circling overhead. I kept my worries to myself.

Now, we're on the highway, looking for signs for the park turn-off. There aren't any. Our map says there's a road. Karen, our trusty GPS navigator, says there's a road. In fact, she says to turn left right here, onto this gravel road unmarked save for a sign for a fundamentalist church.

Of course. That must be it.
We set off down the road. It's not bad at first, but a few miles in, I'm fondly remembering the smooth grading of Highway 126. At Karen's urging, we make a few turns. Each time, the road dwindles, until we're brushing up against sage. The kids can see lizards scrambling away from the car. Don't worry, I'm told, this is how it's supposed to be. Chaco's not for lightweight Simpsons. But I can see Michele getting worried too.

At one point, the road dips into an arroyo, and instead of gunning it up the hill, I foolishly slow down and we're spinning wheels in the bottom. My heart races. Bad words burst from my mouth. The buzzards can't be far now. Michele and the boys get out and push. The car lurches forward, and we're free. What's going on? Where are the park signs? How did we get into an out-take for "No Country for Old Men?"

Nobody is chortling about adventure now. We pass chalky formations from another planet. The kids are singing show tunes to keep everyone's morale high. I'm looking for the cow skull that usually signifies imminent demise. Eventually, Karen's assured path just ends at someone's desolate trailer house surrounded by junked cars and other debris. We come to a belated conclusion: We're defeated idiots. This isn't the road to Chaco.

The only thing to do is turn around and head back. We resign ourselves to a long, cranky retreat when rescuers arrive over the hill. It's a natural gas truck trailed by a company SUV. They look at us quizzically -- we must seem as out of place as a yacht -- and then drive on slowly, allowing us to follow them along a different and slightly less scary route. And we do, as if our bumpers were attached.

About 30 minutes later at a fork, the truck stops, and the driver and his SUV partner confer. Great: They're lost too. I take the opportunity to bound out and thank our benefactor, a grinning, balding guy in shades with a big gray mustache. The first thing he says as I approach: "You looked a little lost." Gee, was it the kids or the cargo shell that gave us away? We were trying to get to Chaco, I say. He makes it official: It's the old road, no longer used -- a fact confirmed later by park rangers who say it was abandoned 18 years ago. The real entrance lies about eight miles to the north. Don't worry, he says, one way or another they'll get us back to civilization.

They make good on their promise. We pull up next to the gas man at the highway, and he says it often happens: Maps and GPS systems still show the old road. So Michele's memory was right. Karen was right -- sort of. Of course, we could have checked a current guidebook beforehand, but he's too kind to say so.

Even more graciously, he offers to lead us to the park entrance. Something tells me he has his doubts about our directional skills. In any case, we speed along behind him -- past the huge brown signs for the park -- and he even turns with us, perhaps just to make sure we didn't veer off in some random path.

We honk as we pass, he waves, and that's it. We feel more than a bit foolish after the first few miles are paved and well-marked, suitable for any RV. The rest proves to be teeth-jarring and dusty, with long washboard stretches that threaten to shake apart the car but entice the boys to practice their yodeling. But after our first attempt, it's practically the Autobahn.

As the gas man said, now we have a good GPS story.