Day 964: Chaco Culture National Historical Park

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Ben

This morning was pretty windy, so I didn’t fly:

Trish made another tasty breakfast:

We took the truck and started driving towards Chaco Culture National Historical Park. This route is not officially maintained, and as we followed faint tracks through the grasslands, we passed some open range goats:

We also saw a number of wild horses:

This area has a number of abandoned structures built by homesteaders and ranchers of bygone days:

We at last arrived at Chaco Culture:

Fajada Butte:

Chaco Culture preserves the central population center for the Ancestral Puebloan people. From 850 to 1150, the Ancestral Puebloans built dozens of Great Houses here. The first site we visited was Hungo Pavi, occupied from 1000 to 1250:

By the 11th century, the Ancestral Puebloans were building walls using rough inner “fill” stone and carefully cut outer “veneer” stone, creating smooth-surfaced walls:

To transport timber from distant mountains, roads were built. The staircase used to descend to the canon floor is still visible:

We next visited the Great House Chetro Ketl, occupied from 950 to 1950:

A great kiva:

This underground kiva has been excavated and reinforced:

This wall its original wooden porch along its length until the early 1900s, when it was scavenged by homesteaders:

There are a number of petroglyph sites here:

Our last stop was Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House at Chaco Culture:

This massive rock-fall crushed 30 excavated rooms. A thousand years ago, Ancestral Puebloans built a retaining wall in a failed attempt to support what was once a massive slab peeling off the cliff face behind the Great House:

Views of Pueblo Bonito:

The Ancestral Puebloans tapered their wall thickness to allow lower stories to better support upper stories:

The precision of their walls is impressive:

Great kivas at Pueblo Bonito:

We went inside the Great House:

This room still has its original wooden ceiling:

We decided to hike up onto the canyon rim so we could look down on Pueblo Bonito. The hike goes up through this crevice in the canyon wall:

Trish photographed me looking down at her:

From the top, we could look down into the ruins of a smaller building:

These dark protrusions are fossilized burrows of a shrimp-like animal:

After a bit over a mile, we could look down on Pueblo Bonito:

We headed back down:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

When we returned to the RV, the sky was quite dark, and then the sun came out below the clouds, making the ground brighter than the sky:

Day 958: Bandelier NM, Valles Caldera NP

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Ben

Today my parents came by the RV and we headed up to Bandelier National Monument:

We watched the visitor center film and then checked out the displays:

Next we walked the trail that leads out to the dwellings:

The naturally soft ash layer was used by Native Americans for housing. They both lived in caves and in dwellings built against the cliff wall:

We walked through and then onto a ledge above Tyuonyi Pueblo, built in the late 1300s and thought to have had several hundred residents:

This model from the visitor center shows what the pueblo probably looked like when it was in use. Rooms had no doors or windows. All access was through holes in the roof:

We followed this path up against the cliff face to view the caves in which some Indians lived:

I climbed up into one of the caves:

The kids and Bubbe came up too:

This dwelling is called the Long House:

The lines of holes in the cliff wall are sockets for floor and ceiling beams:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their patches. M received the Deputy Ranger patch for his age group:

B received the Junior Ranger patch:

We continued west to visit Valles Caldera National Preserve, which preserves the Valles Caldera, a volcanic caldera almost 15 miles across. The two eruptions that created the caldera ejected 500 times the material ejected by the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

We stopped at an overlook inside the south rim. Looking north, the mountains in the distance are lava domes inside the caldera that were created by later eruptions. The northern rim of the caldera isn’t even visible from here:

We stopped by the visitor center:

A map of the caldera. The photos above showed the Valle Grande area of the caldera, which in in the lower right corner of the caldera:

In a not to the preserve’s ranching past, the Junior Ranger program here is called Junior Cowhand, and the kids had to do a variety of activities including roping this horse:

The kids handed in their worksheets and received their badges:

Parting shots of the caldera:

On our way back, we photographed Camel Rock. I had thought that Camel Rock was only the toadstool-like formation, but I now see that the toadstool is the head of the camel and the hill to the left is the camel’s body:

See the trip map for today’s drive.

Day 956: Purim Prep in Santa Fe

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Ben

Shabbos at the Camel Rock Casino was restful and quiet.

Today we assembled our shalach manos for Purim:

Trish organized all the items she’s crocheted in the last few weeks:

My parents came up from Las Vegas to spend a few days with us here in Santa Fe. We spent a couple hours chatting in front of their hotel:

My parents brought with them the Junior Ranger badges for those sites we had visited in the past and just now received the badges.

We’ve crossed the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail several times on our trip, so we submitted the workbooks and received the badges:

When we visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty this past autumn, those sites had run out of badges, so we received them now. Since both sites are part of the same NPS unit, we received two identical badges, even though each site had its own Junior Ranger workbook:

We visited Fort Pulaski in 2012 but didn’t hand in the workbooks during our visit:

We picked up a few packages and filled up our water in Santa Fe and headed back to the RV. M received his much-anticipated R/C truck today, but more about that tomorrow:

Day 953: Exploring Santa Fe

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Ben

This morning Trish surprised us with another successful culinary experiment:

There’s always something:

We’ve traditionally stored our leveling blocks in their included storage bags. The bags recently fell apart, so we switched to straps. A couple days ago we realized that the blocks fit perfectly on their sides in their compartment without bags or straps:

We dropped of the RV at a tire shop to replace the tire that we punctured on Day 932. I had used a plug kit to seal the hole, but it started to leak. The tire shop suggested that we replace the tire as it had minor belt damage around the hole, so we decided to play it safe and replace the tire.

We had a few hours until the tire was ready, so we decided to try complete the Junior Wagon Master workbooks we picked up at Fort Union National Monument. The workbook, nearly 100 pages long, contains activities for the entire Santa Fe Trail, divided into four geographical sections. Today we worked on the “Western Terminus” section.

Following the instructions in the workbook, our first stop was this sculpture of travelers on the Santa Fe Trail:

Our next stop was the Santa Fe National Cemetery, where we needed to copy the inscription on the tombstone of Charles Bent, first Governor of the New Mexico Territory. In 1847, he was scalped alive and then murdered during the Taos Revolt. Bent’s tombstone is to the right of the large obelisk:

Our last stop was the Santa Fe Plaza, where we had to identify two mistakes on this marker for the western terminus of the Santa Fe Trail:

Santa Fe Plaza:

One side of the plaza is bounded by the Palace of the Governors. Built in 1610, it’s the oldest continuously occupied public building in the US:

Since the 1930s, Native Americans have sold their homemade wares on the porch of the Palace:

The kids completed their Junior Wagon Master workbooks, and we tried to have them checked at the Palace of the Governors, but they only had one patch left:

We drove to the Santa Fe NPS office, where we received a second Junior Wagon Master patch from the author of the Junior Wagon Master workbooks, as well as a general patch for the Santa Fe Trail:

We returned to the tire shop, where I removed a wheel to have the tire shop do a camber rotation. The rear driver-side tire wears on the inside edge due to a poorly aligned or less-than-straight axle. The solution is to have the tire removed from the wheel and re-mounted the other way, so that for the second half of its life the tire can wear down what used to be the other, unworn edge. Here I’m remounting the rotated tire:

Next we stowed the new tire that replaced the punctured tire:

We tried really hard to find a place in Santa Fe to park for Shabbos, but none of the area synagogues could host us, so we drove north about ten miles to overnight at the Camel Rock Casino on the Tesuque Pueblo. After dinner we played a rousing game of Mexican Train dominoes:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 952: Fort Union National Monument

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Ben

This morning, we left the Walmart of Las Vegas, New Mexico after another great breakfast by Trish:

We drove east, crossing the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains and finding ourselves in the aptly named Great Plains. If I squint, I’m pretty sure I can see St. Louis. I exaggerate, but after spending months in the West, this feels very, very flat:

The linear depression in the distance across the photograph is the Santa Fe Trail:

We continued northeast to Fort Union National Monument. The fort was built to subdue Indian tribes and protect travellers on the Santa Fe Trail. Built in the 1850s, the fort met a sudden demise with the obsolescence of the Santa Fe Trail due to the arrival of railroad service from the East. Suddenly a fort with nothing to guard, it was abandoned by the Army.

We checked out the visitor center:

A model of the fort, in its day the largest military installation in the West:

The hospital building is adjacent to the visitor center:

Our first stop was the second fort site. Little more than earthworks, it was designed to repel a Confederate assault. Southern forces did invade and conquer southern New Mexico, but this site never saw action, as Union forces from here deployed to the southwest where the Confederates were turned back at the Battle of Glorieta Pass. The contours of the fort are faintly visible:

The third fort was built of adobe, and has fared better than the first two forts:

Officer barracks:

The prison:

Fort Union was the logistical hub for military control of the Southwest. The fort was both a military post for regional defense and a military depot for distribution of supplies throughout the region: