New Mexico May 2004Part I: Albuquerque and Chaco Canyon
   Monday morning we started at the Botanical Gardens and Aquarium. Both well worth a visit. One of my favorite parts is the Children's Fantasy Garden. See John inside a "giant pumpkin" on the left above. There is a model railroad running through part of the garden (center). On the right is just a sample of the many exhibits - both indoors and out. The aquarium was fantastic but too dark to get any in-focus pictures. We particularly enjoyed a class of young children on a field trip - they recognized many of the fish from "Finding Nemo" and were having a great time pointing out these good friends to each other! The coral reef section and the jellyfish exhibit were our favorites. Tuesday May 11 We made one stop on the way to Chaco at Lybrook's Mercantile to get some beef for supper. The books weren't kidding about the "washerboard" road into Chaco Canyon, but it wasn't that way the whole distance (fortunately). I could fill up pages and pages of photos from the two days we spent there! Tuesday morning we did the self guided tours of Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl and Pueblo Bonito (ruins dating from roughly 800 - 1000 AD). We also took the short Petroglyph trail to see some of the drawings in the side of cliffs - but got much better pictures of others later on.
These are just a couple of the wonderful
flowering
desert plants that we first encountered at Chaco and I came to love. I
had no idea there was so much color in the desert     Left above is a small section of Pueblo Bonito; and on the right a view through one of the windows. Below, you can see John had to duck quite a bit to get through the doorway. Those are the original, 1000 year old, beams (vigas). On the right is one of many round kivas - large meeting room. The center square is a firebox; there is a bench all around the edge for seating. The rectangles are raised floor vaults.   We ate our packed lunches in the car, out of the wind and the sun, and then headed off on the Alto Mesa trail where we found out just how windy it really was! This is about a 6 mile loop from the parking lot - I was prepared for that part. But I was totally unprepared for the "mountain goat" parts (where you just had to climb up gaps in the rocks to the tops of the mesas) or the high winds! I learned that I shouldn't have worn shorts because the sand was occasionally blown so hard it hurt and that I sometimes had to sit down or be blown over. But the views were awesome (I found myself using that word - and meaning it - during many parts of this trip!) I love the trail sign below (left). They aren't kidding - the path is just "up." In the center, you can see it looking back down! And on the right is another way down to an arroyo - an old (no longer usable) staircase!    Up on the top of the mesa we hiked away from the canyon to Pueblo Alto and then all around the rim up and down several levels of mesas, back to the canyon where we had marvelous overviews of Chetro Ketl (left) and Pueblo Bonito (right). Spectacular. Seeing it from above like that really gave us a much better grasp of what we had walked through on the ground.   Worn out, we headed to Nageezi for the night - we stayed at the Inn at the Post B&B. They had warned us it was in the middle of nowhere (it is) so we had our own food. I think there were 3 bedrooms in the small house but we were the only ones there that night so had the whole place, including kitchen and living room, to ourselves. John's chili was great; we both took a turn in the shower and slept soundly. Next morning (Wednesday) we had a nice breakfast and went back to Chaco Canyon (being masochists....it was still very hot and very windy.) We started at Una Vida which is a very short walk from the visitor center and mostly unexcavated, but there were some nice flowers along the path (below center)   
We stopped briefly at the visitors' center to wash off the sand then drove to Bernalillo for the night - had a fast food dinner and slept well! Part II heading for Santa Fe. Click here for
Part 2. . . . |
Monday
afternoon, after lunch at Mac's Cafe and getting ice, we drove up to
Cuba. Great scenery (see left). After we got checked in, we headed off
to see what we could find. Freelove's store is no longer open but
we couldn't resist the picture. It was about the only memorable thing
in Cuba! We went looking
for a Nogales Cliff Dwellers site in the National Forest nearby; though
we followed the directions and found the right Forest Service road, we
didn't find the site. But we enjoyed the forest - it was quite
different than the surrounding desert and mesa areas. Had supper at Del
Prado's (nothing to rave about) and planned to be up and off to 
Then
we got a backcountry permit (so they can keep track of lost hikers I
think) and set off for the Peñasco Blanco Trail. Our
intention
was just to see Casa Chiquita (about a mile) and the petroglyph (above
right) another half mile further and then stop. In fact, when we first
got a glimpse of Peñasco Blanco in the distance
(see picture left), I remember saying "Boy, I'm glad we aren't going
that far today!" But we weren't too hot or tired yet so we thought we'd
go a little further and see more desert flora and fauna. And, well, one
thing led to another and we ended up doing the whole darned thing -
about 8 miles total. It really wasn't as bad as I would have thought -
the winds weren't as strong as up on the mesa and the breeze actually
helped.
Had
lunch in some shade under a tree near the (dry) Chaco Wash. It was
also interesting to see the changes in flora near the wash - "real"
trees and grasses instead of just cactus and
sagebrush. The Peñasco Blanco site is mostly unexcavated but
it
was fun to see how much we could find even without restoration. The
locations of the kivas
were apparent from slight indentations in the ground and
just from the ruins above the ground we could see additions built at
several different times - varying sizes of rocks, methods of laying
them and types of mortar. And we had the whole day to ourselves -
didn't pass a single person the whole way out or back! I insisted on
having a picture (right) to prove we really went the whole way!