Apr 18 - Four Corners to a Gooseneck

• Move from Cortez, CO to Goosenecks State Park in SE Utah
• Route: US-160 to Four Corners to CO-41 which becomes UT162 to US-163 (Bluff) to UT-316 near Mexican Hat
• Miles Today:  114
• Total Spring12 bus-house miles : 1324
• Total Spring12 toad miles :  520
• Tonight's camp: Goosenecks State Park (Utah). Free drycamping
• Weather: morning low 34, high 79 , half clouds, half sun, brisk southerly gusts.
• Notables: 1. Fulfilled a nearly 50 year "to-do" by stopping at the Four Corners Monument. It wasn't especially notable, except to say I've done it. No need to rush back anytime soon.  2. The scenery along the San Juan River and UT-162 raised the "lookey-wow" bar another notch.  3. The Goosenecks along the San Juan River, where we're camped, is simply stunning.
• Link to photo album for today.

=====

Like so much of our existence... it's all about theory and reality.

In theory, the Four Corners Monument is placed exactly at the point where the four states meet. And after some recent controversy about it's location, the Federal Government and the affected States have all closed ranks and agreed that the current monument is indeed the right place. That's the theory, held in place by just saying it's so.

But in reality, the monument is off by some distance... I've read by a couple hundred yards or even up to a quarter mile. The early surveyors were incredibly accurate given the tools they had. But it's true that even two of the best surveyors will come up with slightly different results... even with sophisticated instruments available today. It's just the nature of the discipline.

So here's my take on things: in theory we visited the exact point where the four states meet. In reality, we didn't. And to add another metaphor to the mix... you can add "surveying" to that old adage... that being close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and now, surveying.

We actually did some "linear exploring" today, when we visited the Four Corners Monument. I checked the aerial view on Google Maps a few days ago and found they had plenty of dusty parking available for rigs of any size. So with Toad in tow, we drove into the Monument, paid our $3 per person (it's operated by the Navajo Nation), and parked in the big vehicle parking lot.

I could see why no one was interested in hearing anything about the monument being in the wrong place, as there's about an acre of concrete, with cemented in seating, and cemented in bronze plate with a little X in the middle of it. It might have been better to make the marker something portable so that if error is ever proven they can simply roll it over to the new spot... portable bleechers and all.

On three sides of a square surrounding the monument are rows of Indian vendor booths... all modern and neat... again, made out of concrete and steel. They're not going to move those either.

We took a few pictures, looked around, and Dar had to buy an authentic Indian "Fry Bread"... which was nothing more than the funnel cakes we bought at the county fair in Wisconsin years ago. I never knew that American Indians invented funnel cakes. Amazing what you don't learn as you're traveling.

The entrance to Four Corners is in New Mexico. When we left, we retraced a few miles of our path back into Colorado, and then took a left on a road that soon got us into Utah. The drive up that road... most of it in Utah on UT-162 and along the San Juan River... had some great scenery. Trying to keep the big ol' bus-house on the narrow and shoulder-less road was no easy feat. But before long we were dropping down into Bluff, UT. where we turned left and headed south for a few miles. Again... spectacular scenery along the way.

Just a few miles before reaching the town of Mexican Hat we found a road to the right that takes us to Goosenecks State Park.

Coming over a rise and then dropping down into the Park, the full extent of where we're going to spend the next couple nights comes into view. This small Park is perched on top a bluff in full view of about 4 "gooseneck" bends in the San Juan River... a thousand feet far below. Over eons of time, the river has cut it's way through a thousand feet of rock. The eroding sides of the cliffs, or bluffs, are banded in colors ranging from deep reds, to greens, grays, tans, and browns. The sides are steep, but appear terraced by harder layers of rock offering more resistance to the forces of erosion than the softer layers. It's eye candy for wandering explorers.

The view from our campsite.

The only facilities offered by the State are vault toilets and a few trash cans. Other than that, you pick a spot and park... it's all drycamping -- no hookups. The closest electric line is probably back on the highway about 5 miles away. At night it's dark... totally dark. Unless some errant camper is running his generator, it's quiet... silent... except for sounds of nature or a jet plane passing overhead.

We're parked about 50 feet from the edge, and the view into the Goosenecks of the San Juan River greet us every time we look out. It's the most spectacular place we've camped in the almost 5 years we've been on sabbatical.

click for full size

Apr 17 - Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

• Explored two Pueblos (villages) in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
• Toad Miles Today: 70
• Total Toad Miles Spring12:  520
• Tonight's camp: Sundance RV Park in Cortez
• Weather: morning low: 33  afternoon high: 78, mostly sunny and warm
• Notables: 1. I don't get the same feeling exploring ruins that have been extensively reconstructed for tourists that I get from the original, undisturbed article.  2. Like folks in all cultures, most of us are just trying to get through the day while striving for as much happiness as we can find. 3. A picnic lunch on a flat rock at Lowry Pueblo, listening to nature and pondering this native culture.
• Link to photo album for today.

=====

West of Cortez is a large area of public land known as Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Established in 2000 by Presidential Proclamation, the Monument exists to preserve more than 6,000 archeological sites of the early Puebloan culture.

At about the same time as the Mesa Verde cliff dwellers, there were thousands more Ancient Puebloans living in the valleys and canyons in the surrounding area. The ruins of their dwellings are scattered all over the 4 Corners area, but a particularily large number of them are located in the 164,000 acre Monument.

Some of the sites are the remains of pueblos... villages... where a group of families, perhaps as many as 40 or more, would live together in one place. The structure would be an interconnected set of rooms, kivas, and plazas where the inhabitants worked, lived, and celebrated together. Each family, it is presumed, had it's own room for sleeping... a more or less private space. But most of life was lived with the community.

We visited Lowry Pueblo, about 20 miles northwest of Cortez, the last few miles of which were gravel and dirt road. We were the only people there... at least in our current space/time dimension. It's a 1000 year old ruin of a 40 room pueblo, named after George Lowry, an early 20th century homesteader in the area. Extensively excavated in the 1930s by Dr. Paul Martin of the Chicago Field Museum, it has also been extensively rebuilt and stabilized in 1965. A portion of the pueblo has a protective roof installed.

From Wikipedia...

The Lowry Pueblo National Historic Landmark consists of 8 kivas, a great (community) kiva and 40 rooms built as high as three stories. The underground great kiva was built about AD 1103 and had murals painted over about 5 layers of plaster. About 1110 another kiva was built on top of the original kiva. Based upon the size of the kiva it's thought that the Lowry Pueblo may have been a local center for religious gatherings and celebration.

After exploring the pueblo and the grounds, we utilized a flat rock, located a respectable distance from the pueblo, to enjoy a picnic lunch, to listen to nature, and to think about those early folks. I think, like most of us, they were just doing their best to get through the day... and to do so with a measure of pleasure and happiness.

We then headed back over to the Anasazi Heritage Center and Visitor Center for the National Monument. When we were there the other day it was getting late and we didn't tour the hill-top pueblo just above the Visitor Center. Today we had time.

Escalante Pueblo was visited by the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition in 1776, and thus so named. More typical of ruins from that time, it's basically an outline of low walls and footings exposed by the removal of the collapsed masonry from above.

Most surprising to me, now that I've learned and understand so much more than I knew before about this culture, is it's scale... the geographic area, the number of people, the huge number of remaining sites... it really was a hot-spot of civilization at a very early time in the history of these lands.

Apr 16 - Mesa Verde National Park

• Explored Mesa Verde National Park
• Toad Miles Today: 70
• Total Toad Miles Spring12:  450
• Tonight's camp:  Sundance RV Park, Cortez, CO
• Weather: morning low 31  afternoon high 60; Mostly sunny and cooler... especially at the higher elevation of the Park
• Notables: 1. Impressed by the building expertise, the creativity, and the advanced nature of this early Puebloan culture that blossomed almost a thousand years ago.      2. Wondering and pondering about the ways of the Ancients as reported by their current descendants... the lack of the concept of ownership... living in the "now" but wrapped in their verbal history, with minimal thought or concern about the future.   3. It all reminds me that while we may think we have the answers to life's most important questions... we probably don't.
• Link to photo album for today.

=====

So much has been written about the Ancient Puebloans (also referred to as Anasazi) that I won't attempt another version. Instead, let me try to touch on some of the thoughts and questions we had while enjoying Mesa Verde today.

But first, an overview.  From where they came, no one really knows. There is evidence that they were descendants of the early humans that crossed the land-bridge from Asia into Alaska during the last ice age. Supporting that is the fact some descendants of these early Puebloans (I don't remember if it's Hopi, Navajo, Ute, or some other...) can communicate, in their native language, with Inuit Natives in Alaska, indicating a common source to their two languages.. But there is no definitive proof of their origin. In any case, early ancestors of these people settled in the 4 Corners area about 4,000 years ago, as the climate warmed and made survival possible. Initially they built crude shelters, pithouses, in the broad valleys where they gathered food and other materials that made life possible for them. They began cultivating corn and squash to supplement their diet. Called the Basketmakers by archaeologists, they were particularly skilled at weaving baskets.

The Pueblo culture grew from the Basketmakers are really got it's start about 1300 years ago as the climate warmed even more and made survival at higher elevations possible. They lived on the same mesa tops where they gathered the wood and plants they needed, and grew the corn, squash, and beans they ate. Dwellings were still rather crude, but were becoming progressively better.

Over the years their building style evolved to sturdier and more sophisticated structures. They learned to use adobe and stone... eventually becoming skilled at masonry construction. Multiple family dwellings became common with additional rooms added as needed. Often the structures were built in a curved or almost round fashion, surrounding a central communal or ceremonial room known as a kiva. There was no master plan for these structures... they were organic, evolving according to needs and the whim of those doing the construction. But their ability to work with stone and mortar grew over time and toward the end of their time in the Mesa Verde area, the craftsmanship had reached a high level... even by today's standards.

For some unknown reason, the Ancient Puebloans moved from the mesa tops to the rock alcoves of the cliffs... the sides of the mesa. Here they built stone structures that housed a hundred people or more in a single alcove. Most of the cliff dwelling work took place between 1200 and 1300... a short period for these folks who had already been here for 600 years. And they built with vigor... just inside the boundaries of the National Park, there are over 600 cliff dwellings documented with many more in the surrounding area outside the Park.

The population of this area was greater then than it is today... as many as 30,000 people in this relatively small corner of the world. They were hunter-gatherers, farmed the mesa tops, and made a community in this corner of the world for 700 years. But by the year 1300, they were mostly gone. They didn't just vanish, but migrated south and west, and assimilated into other groups and tribes including the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Zuni, and a dozen or more others.

We can only guess as to why they left. It may have been extended drought. They may have exhausted the supply of wood, which they used for building and for heat. Crops may have failed from disease or drought. Living in larger groups, was disease or friction between groups or families a factor?  Like most large change it was probably a combination of factors, and took place over a longer period of time than we believe.

During our day in the Park, we saw three of the large signature cliff houses, Spruce Tree House, Cliff Palace, and Balcony House. All three of these are down on the end of Chapin Mesa. A second area of the Park, on Wetherill Mesa, doesn't open until later in May.

When viewing the sides of other mesas across the canyons it is common to find cliff dwellings scattered here and there... a lot of them. As mentioned earlier, there are more than 600 of them inside the Park.

It's necessary to buy a ticket for a tour (50 people max) of Cliff Palace, and the hike to it from the mesa top involves a hundred feet of elevation change accomplished with the aid of narrow stone steps (courtesy of the CCC during the depression) and stout wooden ladders. But once to the dwelling we were treated to a close-up encounter with the Ancients through the remains of their community. While there has been some restoration of the ruin, large areas remain intact and original.

Spruce Tree House is a dwelling that can be walked to and toured at your own pace... no ticket required. And while Balcony House was not open yet this time of year for tours, we did hike out to a point on the Soda Canyon Overlook Trail to get a next-best look at the place.

Why did they feel the need to move into the cliffs after having lived for 600 years or more on top the mesas? Was the climate changing? Was it for defensive reasons... was there strife between groups or families? Was it a fad driven by the human trait to differentiate themselves from others? Once some did it, was it a "keep up with the Jones'" thing? You wake up one morning and everyone is driving a mini-van; you wake up another morning and everyone is driving an SUV? Here too, we'll never know.

Is there something that happens when people group themselves in higher density living arrangements that exposes problems and issues that never had to be dealt with before?

It occurred to both Dar and I that as we drive through the dying small communities of the rural USA that we might be witnessing a similar population movement, driven in this case by economics and opportunity.  Are the ghost towns of our civilization really any different than the cliff dwellings?

Is there something that happens inside people once survival is more or less taken care of?  Do we get soft, unwilling to work as hard?  Do we naturally begin to place more importance on the self, the individual, as opposed to the community, the group? Do these changes sow their own seeds of change?

Apr 15 - Anasazi Heritage Center

• Explored the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores, CO
• Toad Miles Today: 24
• Total Toad Miles Spring12:  380
• Tonight's camp: Sundance RV Park in Cortez, CO.
• Weather: morning low 33;  afternoon high 54; morning clouds and showers gave way to more sun in afternoon.
• Notables: 1. Studied Ancient Puebloan Civilization at the Anasazi Heritage Center this afternoon. 2. After two pretty dreary days, seeing the sun again.
• Link to photo album for today

=====

After a slow Sunday morning and a few more rain/snow showers, things started to dry out about noon. There were still a couple showers visible off in the distance, looking like misty waterfalls under dark clouds surrounded by a sun-lit landscape... but it wasn't enough to keep us confined to quarters any longer. Starting tomorrow, the rest of the weather week looks great.

Late morning we drove north about 12 miles to near the town of Delores, CO. where we found the Anasazi Heritage Center. Built as part of the McPhee Reservoir Project in the 1980s, this building and the surrounding grounds are managed by the BLM and also serve as the visitor center for the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

When stopping for the first time in an area, a National Park, Monument, or similar, we find value in getting the "survey course" information at the visitor center... the orientation films, the exhibits, and learn as much as we can about the history and science of the area... before venturing into the field. The Four Corners area of the USA is loaded with archaeological sites relating to the Ancient Puebloans that lived and prospered in this area a thousand years ago, and this is a great resource for the knowledge-hungry explorer.

The other valuable thing we get from these visitor centers is the knowledge and recommendations from those who know... those who work here... those familiar with the area. "That road requires a high-clearance vehicle"  or "This hike will take an average person 4 hours to complete."... it's good stuff to help get the most out of a limited time in the Park... and to help keep you out of trouble.

We were there for almost three hours, and carried home a thick stack of information and maps to pour over during the next day. We have our introduction. Now, over the next two days, we'll get into the field and put a few miles on the hiking boots.

Apr 14 - Snowy Weather Delay

• Tonight's camp: Sundance RV Park in Cortez
• No traveling or exploring today
• Weather: morning low 45; afternoon high 34 (that's right, 34); cloudy, snow showers
• Notables:  1. Snow;  2. Only left the bus-house once... to snap a photo or two of the snow; 3. Developed an allergy to snow.
• Link to today's photo album.

=====

From the weather service for Cortez, CO:

Mostly cloudy with snow and rain, then snow after midnight. Low of 27F with a windchill as low as 19F. Winds from the WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Breezy. Chance of snow 70% with accumulations up to 1 in. possible.

Today was a day of rest and hunkering down against a bit of unsettled weather. Dar has a ton of photos to process and I'm behind on my journal updates. So all the elements came together nicely to provide us this day of working inside the camper and not feeling guilty at all about not being out exploring.

I woke this morning to an itching nose and a building sense that this was going to be one of "those" days... and allergy attack day. After a bit, I started sneezing... strong powerful serial sneezes... like what happens when I stick my head in a bag of dried ragweed back in the Midwest. But what could I be allergic to up here??? at better than 6,000 feet?

I pondered this question while trying to get a few chores done at my desk. Then, a quick glance out the window answered the question. Snow. That's what I'm allergic to up here. And part of that unsettled weather I referred to above is a series of snow showers predicted during the next day or so... in fact it's snowing right now... as I write this.

Snow, for us, seems to go hand-in-hand with Colorado. A few years ago, we were married on a hot humid August day back in the Midwest. Three days later, after driving my VW beetle (with about 3.5 cylinders functioning the way they should) through 100+ degree Omaha heat... we were standing on Loveland Pass throwing snowballs at each other. We pitched the pup tent near Dillion Reservoir and endured 3 or 4 days of cold, rain, and on the last day snow. (But we were in love... right?) I really should have thought to pack something heavier than a T-shirt. Anyway, we finally threw in the towel, (didn't have to smother the campfire... it never really lit right or grew to more than a smoking pile of wet sticks), and headed for the first Holiday Inn we found. We looked so bad you could see them trying to come up with an excuse to send us away. But the gods were shining on us that day... and that shower... that glorious hot long shower... was the best I've ever had.

Yes, we're old hands when it comes to Colorado and snow.

Apr 13 - Mesas, Buttes, and Bad Roads

• Move from Santa Fe, NM. to Cortez, CO.
• Route: I-25S to US-550N to US-64 (Bloomfield) to US-491 (Shiprock)
• Fueled (diesel) at 4.019 (a real bargain for the area)
• Miles Today: 271
• Total Spring12 bus-house miles : 1,210
• Total Spring12 toad miles : 356
• Tonight's camp: Sundance RV Park
• Weather: morning low 34, high 58, mostly sunny day, brisk SW wind
• Notables: 1. Spectacular colorful mesa landscape along US-550; 2. Saw nothing appealing in the Bloomfield to Farmington corridor along US-64; road was horrible too. 3. First time in Colorado with the bus-house since we started the Sabbatical.
• Link to photo album from today.

=====

The weather forecast for the weekend didn't look good for our intrepid explorers, and we had to decide whether to ride out a day or two of rough conditions down in Santa Fe, or up in Cortez, CO., our next planned stop. A short window of calmer conditions seemed to exist on Friday and, if we were up to the task, we could make the drive into Colorado, wait out the Saturday-Sunday problem up there... and then be ready for Mesa Verde National Park on Monday. And that's what we decided to do.

For the second time in a row we got an early start, on the highway by 8:15am. A quick stop for fuel in San Felipe, and we were again heading northwest toward the Four Corners area. The landscape along US-550 was desolate and beautiful. Colorful mesas and buttes were everywhere. With a little research I found a consensus about what the difference is between a butte and a mesa (and a plateau).  It's all a matter of size. Think of a high plateau with rivers starting to erode all of it's sides. Eventually, the rivers erode enough material that the flat top is isolated from the surrounding geography. The plateau has become a mesa. When the mesa continues to erode and becomes smaller and smaller, eventually the flat part on top is smaller than the sides are high... and the mesa has now become a butte. Buttes may have small flat tops, but eventually, the flat top gives way to a jagged or peaked top. Now you know.

A butte (foreground)... a mesa behind.

We stopped at a diner in Bloomfield for lunch, followed by a heading change to the west on US-64. We've been on a lot of bad roads over the years of the Sabbatical, but the stretch from Bloomfield through Farmington was among the worst. There were signs that they might be thinking about working on it... but it's a POS road in my opinion. We saw a lot of oil field work in this part of the world and while this activity provides jobs and adds to the economy, it, in my experience, does nothing for "quality of life" conditions in the affected towns.

Off in the distance was Shiprock Peak, standing stark and tall on, what one could easily imagine, a broad flat rough sea. Arrrgh!

Shiprock Peak

A turn to the North at the town of Shiprock (wonder how it got that name?) took us the last 45 miles or so to Cortez, CO. This road, US-491, was a bit of a challenge too. Occasional dips in the road surface, ranging from small whoop-dee-doos to very deep "OMG... we're going to bottom out and rip the jacks off the bus-house" drop-offs made for a challenging and slow journey. We learned to identify the dips and judge their severity by the amount of oil (from ripped open engine oil pans??), rubber (from tires going airborne and coming back to earth again??), and vehicle wreckage on the side of the road.

Arriving in Cortez about 2:30pm we found the more affordable Passport America RV Park closed for major renovations. But our back-up, Sundance RV Park, was open for business and had room for these two tired travelers.

We'll settle down for a day or two and let the weather do what it will do. Can't do anything about it anyway. And we like having a day or two like this once in a while to get caught up on our work. With plenty of  photo-processing and writing to do, we'll keep busy.

=====

A few housekeeping notes: Dar's been working hard at updating our photo journal. Over the next day or two, new albums from recent travels and explorations will be available. We keep this photo journal as an adjunct to the blog, and it really adds another valuable dimension to our story. I'm also starting to put a link to each exploration day's photos in the bullet-point header info at the top of each post.

Second, I've got an updated interactive map for our 2012 travels on our map page. Just click on the "Maps" tab, and see a chronological record in graphic map form.

Life is not good... it's great!

Yes, it's colorful, but it can also be snowy.