High desert Southwest Part 1

 This year to escape the smarchiness of Massachusetts "spring", we traveled to...I don't know how to describe it. We toured the Four Corners region but never passed through the Four Corners. We went to the Grand Canyon, but since it was considered a low point of the trip, it doesn't deserve a topline title. We visited CONMUTAZ. We were in the US physiographic province of the Colorado Plateau, but spent only and day and a half in the state of Colorado. But universally everywhere we went, we were above 6,000 feet in elevation in a parched landscape where living off the land looked very difficult. So that's it - the high desert Southwest.

The flight from Denver

to Durango, CO

The red line is our path overlaid on the Four Corners. We put 1759 miles on our 4WD vehicle, which came in handy for 2 dirt road adventures, one planned and one unplanned

First of the many ancestral Puebloan NPS sites was Aztec Ruins. The girls had forgotten how to use a mano and metate to grind corn 

Aztec Ruins had an enormous reconstructed kiva, or ceremonial subterranean dwelling. We didn't know it at the time, but this reconstruction was more interesting than any of the many, many, ruined kivas that we encountered at sites later in the trip

Someone in Farmington, NM spent a lot of time on this full-size Tow Mater

The entrance to our lodging at Kokopelli's Cave, owned by a geologist who tunneled into the sandstone to create a comfortable B&B

Strewn throughout the cave were rocks with notes and family signatures and a few treasure hunts

Visiting Chaco Culture NHP/WHS requires traversing dirt roads in the Navajo Nation and was one reason to rent a 4WD vehicle. The final 13 miles of washboard road were so bad that we thought our vehicle would shake itself apart.

From 850-1150, Chaco was the biggest development of the Four Corners area and spiritual center for thousands of ancestral Puebloans. It was abandoned in the 1200s, probably due to drought as the small springs that drained off the mesas disappeared.

Now onto the most famous Puebloan park,

Mesa Verde National Park. MVNP rivals Zion in terms of canyon beauty but this early in the season was almost empty.

We visited here back in 2015 with Grandma Joan and without Heather

Easter morning run from the Far View Lodge. I felt OK for being 8,000 feet above my usual running altitude, but Caroline struggled

Caroline wanted to do some "real hiking" on the trip and the Petroglyph Trail provided it

Petroglyphs were carved for cultural purposes and often were the site of sacred ceremonies. I can't help thinking that some on this panel were made by teenagers goofing off

Like these ones

Spruce House, the most complex cliff dwelling in the park

We bought a 2 lb container of mixed greens to satisfy Caroline's healthy eating and she polished it off on day 2 of the trip

Ever heard of Hovenweep? Didn't think so. It has ruins of the ancestral Puebloans

and signs written in the Navajo language

Natural Bridges National Monument lived up to its billing as having 3 large "bridges" over the White Canyon River. To me they look like arches, but according the NPS, "both are formed with water and time, but with different processes. Running water carves natural bridges, while seeping moisture and frost shape arches." I guess the point is that arches don't span anything whereas bridges span rivers.

Pro tip: to keep your 9 year-old happy and energized during a long day on the road, nothing beats sugar cereal. They're grrreat!

Monument Valley Tribal Park is within the Navajo Nation and on the UT-AZ border. NPS sites within the Nation are administered by the NPS, but areas such as Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon are controlled by the Navajo.

We stayed in one of these rimside cabins. This was the only electric vehicle that we saw on our entire trip.

Sunrise on day 1

 Hiking excursions in the park require Navajo guides. We signed up for a walking tour from a guide who grew up in the valley and taught us about local plants and ways of life of current valley residents

The trail ride was spectacular with the highlight being the girls getting to canter

Most of the monuments in the valley are buttes. Again from the NPS "Mesas are isolated, broad flat-topped mountains with at least one steep side. Buttes are smaller flat topped mountains or hills with steep slopes on all sides. They are typically topped by a hard cap rock that is resistant to erosion and protects the softer lower layers beneath. Pillars and spires are slender isolated columns of rock, that form as the erosional remnant of a butte". So, water erosion converts mesas to buttes and then spires whereas frost and ice sculpt arches and hoodoos. Wait 'til we get to Alaska, and then we can talk about cirques, nunataks, arêtes, horns, moraines, eskers, drumlins, and paternoster lakes.

3 buttes