Hovenweep

May 10, 2010

Another day of shopping, laundry and chores. This time in Cortez, Colorado, right outside of Mesa Verde National Park. We plan to spend some time in the park starting tomorrow but for now everything we own needs charging. We're at a commercial RV park, large on amenities and short on scenery.

We spent the past three days at Hovenweep National Monument, canyon and mesa country that contains a number of Pueblo Indian archaeological sites. The ancient settlements reached their peak in about 1100 and by the late 1200s were abandoned. Theories for this include prolonged drought in the area, overuse of natural resources and possibly internal strife. Archaeologists may not know why they left, but their spectacular stonework remains in the many ruins. We spent our first afternoon hiking the short rim trail which overlooks some of the best-preserved buildings. The next day we cycled about eight miles to a dirt road, cycled that to several sites where we hiked out to view the ruins. When we returned—hot, tired and dirty—a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) officer was waiting at our bikes. We don't really know why he was there but we chatted with him for a long time. Perhaps he doesn't get that many people to talk to or maybe just finding two bikes in the middle of nowhere was cause to wait and make sure all was well. To see the final two areas, we drove the van (speedy Roadtrek) down some rather dicey dirt roads. On one we squeezed by a US Mail delivery SUV going the other way. We were astonished that he would be on such a road. Of course, who knows what he thought about a 19-foot campervan on a rutted, rock-strewn road with deep sand patches in the middle of the desert.

[Note, many of the photos are not captioned because many of the ruins are similar and many of the wildflowers are unidentified (until I get home). If you really want to know which is which, just ask and I'll figure it out.]

Photos