This morning we crossed into Arkansas and visited Fort Smith National Historic Site:

Fort Smith was initially built in the early 1800s to provide a US presence in the area and tasked primary with preventing warfare between local Indians and Eastern Indians forced by US policy to resettle in this area.  By the 1870s, the main building was being used as a jail and courthouse:

The Fort Smith courtroom:

The gallows.  79 people were hanged here between 1875 and 1896:

I didn’t get to see much of the site, as I spent most of our visit speaking with the ranger, a part-Lenape Indian, about the repeated relocations that caused his New Jersey-based tribe to end up with scattered holdings in northeastern Oklahoma.

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

Our next stop was Crater of Diamonds State Park, the world’s only diamond mine open to the public:

The visitor center was interesting:

I had a few phone errands to run, so I stayed in the RV while Trish and the kids went out to the dig area:

With an average ore richness of one diamond per 45 tons of mined earth, I suppose it’s not too surprising that after a couple hours of work they came up empty:

Back at the RV, one of the tires wasn’t quite round.  I suspect a belt broke within the tire, so we swapped it out with the spare:

From here, we drove north to the Bear Creek Campground, an Army Corps of Engineers campground on Lake Greeson.  As far as I can tell, we’re here before the start of the fee season for the campground.

Good Shabbos from Bear Creek Campground!  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Today we continued east to visit the ranger station for Lake Meredith National Recreation Area.  There were no visitor displays there, but we did pick up the Junior Ranger book for the site.

We drove to the adjacent Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, which preserves flint quarries used by Native Americans:

To protect the quarries, the park only allows visits to the quarries on a two-hour ranger-guided walk.  We decided to skip the tour and instead learn about the site through the park film and the visitor exhibits:

The ranger showed the kids various implements made from parts of a bison.  The kids handed in their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

They also handed in the Lake Meredith National Recreation Area workbooks here:

This site also had workbooks for the National Park Service’s centennial, so the kids completed those workbooks as well:

We continued east and crossed into Oklahoma.  This is our first visit to the Sooner State:

We ended today’s drive at Skipout Lake, a USFS site that allows dispersed camping:

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

We’ve been at about 6,000 feet lately, and the nights get pretty cold.  At dawn, it’s typically in the high-20s outside and in the mid-30s inside the RV.  We definitely bundle up before getting in bed:

Trish made another fantastic breakfast this morning:

We drove north to visit Aztec Ruins National Monument:

We enjoyed the exhibit space in the visitor center:

Compared to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, which we visited a few days ago, Aztec Ruins was a bit disappointing, but it was still interesting. Like at Chaco, these ruins were built not by the Aztecs, but by the Ancestral Puebloan people.  Aztec Ruins was built between the 11th and 13th centuries:

We were amazed to find original 11th century wooden roofs in these rooms:

This excavated door, filled in during later construction, still has remnants of its 11th-century reed privacy screen:

The pueblo here was built with accent lines using green stones:

A satellite site to the main pueblo:

Overlooking the main site:

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

We next drove west to drop off the RV at our overnight location in the Farmington Dunes OHV Area.  We picked this location so M can drive around his R/C car on the dunes:

We drove the truck south to visit the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness:

We hiked east into the Bisti Wilderness:

Hoodoos were everywhere:

The Bisti Wilderness is best known for it’s “broken egg” formations:

We continued on:

The tiny Bisti Arch:

We drove back to the RV to overnight at the Farmington Dunes OHV Area.  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

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: