September 10, 2015
I woke up early to the sound of crunching gravel as fellow
travelers pulled out of the makeshift campground. I got up, boiled some eggs, and overcooked
some bacon. The museum didn’t open until
9:00 and I was packed and ready to go by 8:00.
I was nervous about finding gas and wanted to get to Canyon de Chelly in
time to see it that day, so I reluctantly decided to forgo visiting the Hopi
villages and made a break for Keams Canyon, the only town of any size on the
reservation. Fortunately, there was a gas
station there. They only had regular gas
and my car takes premium, but I bought five gallons, which was enough to get me
to civilization.
Alcohol is prohibited on Indian lands, but the specter of
alcoholism loomed everywhere. I listened
to the Hopi radio station and there were public service announcements
advertising various methods of drying out.
Every town had a detox center. I
wondered if they really had a higher percentage of alcoholics, or if they were
just more open about it. I also wondered
where they got their booze, since it was a long way off the reservation (100
miles or more) to the nearest liquor store.
I took my beer out of my cooler and stashed it with my spare tire,
observing the ban while I was visiting.
My neighbor in the Hopi campground did not. He had a large bottle of tequila perched on
the roof of his truck, which I considered very bad form.
Eventually, Highway 264 intersected Highway 191 and I turned
north and drove through the Navajo reservation to the town of Chinle. For my entire time in Arizona, I never knew
what time it was. Arizona was on
Mountain time, but they did not observe daylight savings time, which made them
the same as California except that the Navajo did observe daylight savings time
and the Hopi did not. For some reason,
my cell phone thought it was two hours later.
I was perpetually confused. By
the time I stopped for my morning coffee in Chinle (I had left my coffee in
Marina del Rey), it was the lunch rush at Burger King. The Burger King parking lot was overrun with
men begging for cash. They had two
employees whose job it was just to run them off and apologize to customers. The Navajo reservation appeared much more
prosperous than the Hopi, but they also had more big-city problems.
From Chinle, I drove into the Canyon de Chelly National
Monument and stopped at the visitor center.
I oriented myself and picked up a map.
Canyon de Chelly is a series of branching canyons shaped like a tree
with a short trunk. The canyon walls are
red and sheer and the canyon floors wide and green. Visitors without guides are confined to the
mesa top, with the exception of one trail down to the White House Ruin. This makes a lot of sense, as it would be
easy to lose oneself in the maze of canyons.
I decided to drive along the South Rim, stopping at each of the overlook
points which offered good views of cliff dwellings on the other side of the
canyon. At the second stop, I met a
Navajo vendor named Many Stars. He was
very chatty. I bought a pair of silver
earrings from him and he told me about the house he was building down the
road. I had always assumed the cliff
dwellers had built their structures for some good reason like security, but I
started to wonder if maybe they weren’t just regular people who wanted to build
a house and took advantage of a site that provided ready-made walls and roof,
not to mention energy efficiency.
I wanted to walk down to the White House Ruin, but didn’t
want to do it in the heat of the day, since it was nearly 90 degrees out. I stopped at all of the overlooks on the
South Rim, but saved the White House one for the end of the day. There are no park service campgrounds at
Canyon de Chelly, but there is a Navajo run campground at Spider Rock. It is a fairly primitive affair, but does
boast solar heated showers for $3. At
the Spider Rock overlook, I encountered a couple from Tucson in
wheelchairs. His was motorized and he
was very slowly pulling her up the hill.
I asked if they were happy or could use a little help. He was quick to answer that SHE could use
some help. I gave her a push to the top
of the hill and, without the extra load, he was able to keep up with us.
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| Modern Petroglyph |
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| North Rim Overlook |
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| View from North Rim |
After exploring the South Rim, I then took a drive along the
North Rim, which offers fewer views of cliff dwellings, although it had some
lovely overlooks with modern petroglyphs marking the path across expanses of
stone. It was 5:30 by the time I
returned to the White House overlook and started down the path to the canyon
floor. It was difficult to tell how some
of the cliff dwellings had been accessed, but it is likely that the original
pathways have eroded away. I doubt that
the trail down to the White House Ruin has been there for more than fifty or
sixty years, but the cuts already look very weathered. Eight hundred years could have erased a
substantial path. The path descends for
600 feet to the canyon floor and then follows the stream around the corner to
the base of the cliff. At the White
House Ruin, there were buildings on the canyon floor and also in the alcove
part of the way up the cliff above. The
name comes from one of the buildings in the alcove that was plastered with a
white covering. The walk was pretty, but
there was some sort of biting insect along the stream that feasted on my
calves. It was late in the day and I
encountered few tourists, but was surprised to see a number of Navajo who must
have lived in the canyon and were using the pathway to commute to and from
their homes. I climbed out of the canyon
just before sunset and drove down the hill to the Holiday Inn.
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| White House Ruin |
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| Holiday Inn in Canyon de Chelly |
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| Cliff Above the White House Ruin |
Usually I wouldn’t pay the exorbitant price for a hotel at a
national park, but I had been living out of my car for six days and needed to
reorganize. I also needed to charge my
computer and the inflator for my air mattress.
A shower didn’t sound bad, either.
The Holiday Inn at Canyon de Chelly was expensive ($141/night including
taxes), but it was a lovely setting with pueblo style architecture. I took a shower and had a Navajo taco (chili
on Navajo fry bread) in the restaurant.
Then I retired to my room to work on my blog post and rearrange my
ridiculously heavy luggage into a more portable version for camping.
September 11, 2015
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| Driving to Four Corners |
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| Four Corners |
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| Four Corners Monument |
I didn’t wake up as early as I had planned, but I had stayed
up late the night before, writing, and did get a good night’s sleep. I ate a hard-boiled egg and a banana and made
some coffee in my room. Then I
reorganized the car and pulled out of the hotel about 10:00. I filled my tank with premium gas in Chinle
and picked up another block of ice. Then
I headed up the road towards Four Corners.
At first, I drove through red rock mesas, but gradually the rock became
more drab and the formations less fantastic.
After a couple of hours, I reached the Four Corners monument. Thirty years ago, my father, who was a ham
radio operator, had strung an antenna around the marker and transmitted from
four states at once. Today, there is a
large monument with flags from four states and two Indian nations (Navajo and
Ute), surrounded by stalls for craft vendors.
I bought a present for Scott’s mother and hit the road.
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| Mesa Verde Visitor Center |
Less than an hour later, I arrived in Cortez, CO, where I
bought lunch before continuing a few miles further to Mesa Verde National
Park. My first stop was the visitor
center. I had paid for a tour online and
needed to figure out where and when to meet the group. After looking at the exhibits in the visitor
center and admiring the scenery, I continued up the road to the Morefield
Campground. There is a small village
just before the campground with a store, laundromat, restaurant and ranger
station. I registered at the store and
then selected one of the tent sites. The
Morefield campground is large (250 sites), but was fairly empty when I arrived
about 1:00. I picked a shady site and
set up my tent and inflated my mattress.
I sat in the shade and enjoyed a cold drink while I planned my
afternoon.
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| My Campsite |
About 3:00, I headed up the road towards Chapin Mesa. Along the way, I stopped at the Park Lookout,
which is a fire lookout on the highest spot in the park. Most of the park had burned at some point in this century and fire damage was evident everywhere. There was a tremendous 360 degree view from
up there. Mesa Verde is a big slab of
stone that was uplifted on one side and then carved into canyons. The top is nearly 8600 feet above sea
level.
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| View from Park Lookout |
At Chapin Mesa, there is a nice
museum dating back to the early years of the 20th century. From there, you can walk a short way down to
the Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling.
While Mesa Verde isn’t nearly as spectacular as Canyon de Chelly, the
ruins are much more accessible. You
couldn’t climb on them, but you could get close enough to touch and to look
into the kivas (circular pits used for ceremonial and domestic purposes.) While the inhabitants of Canyon de Chelly
farmed the canyon floor and climbed up to their homes, the citizens of Mesa
Verde farmed on top of the mesa and descended to their homes. The canyon walls were not sheer and it was
easy to access the alcoves where they built their dwellings. In fact, the population originally lived
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| Museum at Chapin Mesa |
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| Inside Spruce Tree House |
in
pueblos on top of the mesa and only moved to the alcoves during the last
hundred years or so before they left the mesa altogether. The cliff dwellings were not inhabited for
longer than we might inhabit a house today.
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| Spruce Tree House |
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| View from Petroglyph Trail |
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| Petroglyphs |
After checking out the Spruce Tree House, I hiked the
Petroglyph trail a mile and a half or so along the ledge containing the ruins
to a spot where a number of petroglyphs had been carved into the stone. It was an interesting path and I had to
squeeze between boulders and climb up and down stairways made of stone or
carved into the rock. It gave me an idea
what it would have been like to live in such a place. After reaching the petroglyphs, the trail
climbed steeply to the top of the mesa and then followed the edge of the mesa
to the head of the canyon where it crossed above the Spruce Tree House and
offered nice views of the same before returning to the museum.
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| Early Pueblo at Far View |
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| Kiva at Far View |
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| Far View Site |
It was 6:00 by the time I got back to my car, but I had time
to visit the Far View Sites, where there were older ruins from the pre-cliff
dwelling period. They were still
impressive. The inhabitants had even
built a reservoir. I made a quick
circuit of the sites and then headed back down the hill to my camp where I
cooked dinner and spent the evening writing about my experiences. About midnight, I was awakened by a raging
windstorm. The tent was deforming and
would have blown away had I not been holding it down. I lay there for an hour or so until it calmed
down enough that I could go back to sleep.
September 12, 2015
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| Pithouse Construction |
It was a good thing that I didn’t need to rely on my cell
phone alarm to wake me, since the battery had died during the night. Unfortunately, I had been awake since 4:00,
not wanting to get dressed and put my shoes on to go to the restroom, but too
uncomfortable to sleep. The whole
campground must have been in the same predicament because at 6:00, everyone
came alive. I got up and made some of
the coffee I had liberated from the Holiday Inn. I ate breakfast and read for a bit until it
was time to head up the hill to the Far View Lodge to meet up with my bus
tour. I had signed up for a four hour
bus tour online. The tour was conducted
by Mesa Verde Guided Tours and it was very good. The guide had lived in the park for about 50
years and was very knowledgeable. He
took us to different sites on Chapin Mesa and explained how the architecture
had evolved from pit houses to pueblos to the cliff dwellings at the end of the
occupation of Mesa Verde. He took us to
the Sun Temple, which was a very large complex that seemed to have been abandoned
before its completion.
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| Sun Temple |
We stopped at several overlooks to view cliff dwellings and
our guide explained how the alcoves were formed when water percolated through
the loose sandstone layer until it reached the impermeable Mogollon shale
layer. There, it worked its way to the
face of the mesa and seeped out, taking part of the stone with it until an
alcove was formed. These seep springs
came in handy for the cliff dwellers who were able to obtain water close to or
even inside of their alcoves. Mesa Verde
has 600 cliff dwellings. Most are just a
few rooms and probably housed a single family, but some had up to 150 rooms and
housed up to a hundred people. The
pueblo people did not view waste as garbage the way we do. Everything they used came from nature and
they believed that when they were finished with something, they had to give it
back to nature. Their garbage, human
waste and even human remains were scattered down the side of the canyon in
front of their pueblos, although the dead were buried. Bodies were not considered garbage, but
things that were no longer needed.
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| Cliff Palace |
Eventually, our group joined a ranger led tour of Cliff
Palace, the largest of the cliff dwellings and the one you usually see on
postcards. We descended a pathway carved
by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the depression and then actually
walked through the city before climbing out via a series of ladders that
followed the original access route. We
could still see some of the hand and foot holds that had been carved into the
rock. The city was very impressive, with
several towers and some “penthouses” on an upper level. There were numerous kivas, the circular
subterranean structures that served as ceremonial centers and living rooms for
the inhabitants. Being subterranean,
they were warm in winter and cool in summer, so were perfect places to hang out
and escape the harsh climate.
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| Cliff Palace from Inside the Alcove |
No one knows why the people left about 1300. There is no evidence of plague or war. There had been a drought, but they had
survived droughts before. The most
plausible explanation I heard offered was that some shaman decided it was time
for them to move on. The pueblo people have a tradition of migration, believing that they must learn to live everywhere before they may settle in one place. The decision may
have been influenced by food or water shortage or overpopulation, soil
depletion, or unusual cold.
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| View from Lookout Point |
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| Knife Edge Trail |
After the tour, I headed back down the hill to the
campground. On my way, I saw a bear
ambling down the road. I was
sleepy. I fried up some bacon for lunch,
did my dishes, and took a long nap. At
about 4:00, I got up and went for a couple of the hikes leaving from the
Morefield Campground. First, I climbed
up to Lookout Point. The trail
switchbacked up the side of the Mesa for a mile or so and then traversed the
top of the Mesa to a point with a 180 degree view of the surrounding valleys
and mountains. It was clear and the view
was pretty spectacular. I charged up
there and back in an hour, but it was a pretty good climb and could easily take
twice that long. After I returned to my
car, I backtracked to the trailhead for the Knife Edge trail. That trail follows the old access road along
the side of the mesa for a mile before ending at a slide. It was fairly level, but offered good views
and lots of wild flowers and cottontail rabbits and deer. I knocked the two mile round trip out in 40
minutes, finishing just before sunset.
Then I returned to my campsite, ate leftovers from the night before for
dinner and spent the evening chatting with friends over the spotty WiFi
connection and writing.
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| Thirsty Deer at the Pump Out Station |
On my way back to the hostel from the bridge, I stopped at
the Taos Brewing Company because everyone had told me the food and beer were
good. I had a tasty pulled pork sandwich
and a pint of their Fall Down Brown, which was actually the least alcoholic
beer they served at just 4.6% alcohol.
By the time I left it was pitch dark and I could barely find my way out
of the parking lot. It seemed I hadn’t
seen a moon since I left Benicia. I
drove back to Arroyo Seco with my high beams on most of the way. It was 9:00 when I returned to the hostel
and, unlike the night before when a large group had been partying around the
firepit, the place was still as a tomb.
I headed straight for my cabin and settled in to chronicle the day.
