Aztec, NM -- 36 days into trip

Aztec, NM 77 degrees overcast.  We spent today doing laundry (Phyllis) cleaning car windows and doing some waxing (Lynn), updating camera at Target (Lynn) picking up medication at Walgreen (Phyllis) picking up some things at Walmart and eating a late lunch of Ice Cream at 3:15 pm.

Last evening we had supper out with Nancy Fulk McKinnon (from Clarinda) who lives here now. 

We had spent the whole day driving the 85 miles to Chaco Canyon.  The last 16 miles were dirt/rock and except for about the first mile or so off pavement the rest looked like this at left.  Anything over 5 miles an hour rattled everything in the truck and us, so it took about an hour and 20 minutes to cover those 16 miles both going in and out of the park.

Pengy did tip over a couple times on this road.





Once we got to the park it had 9 miles of paving around to many Chaco ruins.

The site for this is at
Chaco Culture National Historical Park

I have put my photos on Picasa at Chaco photos   As you can see in the photos, we did a couple walks on our own, and then spent about an hour and a half with a Ranger on a very interesting tour.  Of course we had some idiots who had to talk to each other at the edge of the group while she was giving information and then they would invariably come up and ask a few questions she had just answered.  Damned fools!

Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes which remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the "Sun Dagger" petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction. Climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a fifty-year drought commencing in 1130.

Chaco Canyon lies within the San Juan Basin, atop the vast Colorado Plateau, surrounded by the Chuska Mountains in the west, the San Juan Mountains to the north, and the San Pedro Mountains in the east. Ancient Chacoans drew upon dense forests of oak, piñon, ponderosa pine, and juniper to obtain timber and other resources. The canyon itself, located within lowlands circumscribed by dune fields, ridges, and mountains, is aligned along a roughly northwest-to-southeast axis and is rimmed by flat massifs known as mesas. Large gaps between the southwestern cliff faces—side canyons known as rincons—were critical in funneling rain-bearing storms into the canyon and boosting local precipitation levels. The principal Chacoan complexes, such as Pueblo Bonito, Nuevo Alto, and Kin Kletso, have elevations of 6,200 to 6,440 feet (1,890 to 1,960 m).


The alluvial canyon floor slopes downward to the northeast at a gentle grade of 30 feet (9.1 m) per mile (6 meters per kilometer); it is bisected by the Chaco Wash, an arroyo that rarely bears water. The canyon's main aquifers were too deep to be of use to ancient Chacoans: only several smaller and shallower sources supported the small springs that sustained them. Aside from occasional storm runoff coursing through arroyos, substantial surface water—springs, pools, wells—is virtually non-existent.
 


We had left Grants, NM, and driven west to Gallup and then north to Ship Rock, NM and back east to Farmington and Aztec on Sunday.  Lots of varied scenery.

We have crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado many times and you are always climbing steeply to it and then descending just as steeply.  Not so were we went across between Grants and Gallup.  For many miles it seemed you were on a nearly flat place and just gradually climbed.  The little bump where the stores and signs were hardly stood out as height.

 This is Ship Rock.  Guess it is to look like sail of a ship.

      A good sized pile of rock standing by itself, between Gallup and Ship Rock.








Tomorrow morning we will finish viewing the Aztec Ruins here just about 5 blocks north of our RV Park and then hitch up and head to the Four Corners Region and on into Arizona across the Glen Canyon Dam at Page, AZ and then on up to Paragonah, UT where we will spend some time with Bob and Marlese Talbot.  They were our neighbors in Salt Lake City from June of 1967 to January of 1970 when we lived there.  Will be nice to visit with them.

Diesel in this area is at $3.68 while Gas is priced at $3.65.

Lynn