Mother nature altered our itinerary once again!  Not only were we unable to reach Taos, NM, because of the forecast for cold temps and some snow, but we also decided to cross the Sierras a day earlier because of the impending storm that was to come in Thursday evening, dropping snow on Donner Summit.  So we arrived back at Rancho Cielito (aka: Utterly Blessed Farm) on Wednesday night and arrived home in Eureka Thursday afternoon.  In retrospect it was a very relaxing, successful sojurn or foray.  We managed to test both the Ford and the Fox in a variety of settings and over an assortment of terrains, and both passed with flying colors.  The Ford is a thirsty but smooth and powerful beast, and the Fox is a very comfortable and spacious upgrade from the miniscule RoadTrek.

We spent a rainy Monday night in Draper, Utah.  The drive from Moab to Draper on HWY 6 goes along Spanish Fork Canyon and over Soldier Peak, reaching altitudes over 7,000 feet.  It started to rain and then hail making driving a bit dicey.  Fortunately, we felt quite safe in our robust and sturdy Ford.  Our stop in Draper was not for any particular scenic attraction, but merely a convenient midway point between Moab and Elko, NV, our destination for Tuesday.  I have included some "out takes" from the leftover photo file.

Puebloan architectural detail

Paula and Clifford examining vegetation

Amazing colors!

See waving hand in background

Dwarfed by arch

Effects of minerals on cliff wall

Layers of geological time

Mt. Rushmore?

Abe himself!

Spent the night in Cortez, NM, at the Sundance RV Park.  Woke to a beautiful, sunny Easter morning.  After breakfast and a short walk to a local coffee shop, we headed for the Anasazi Heritage Center, a ten-mile drive north of Cortez.  The Center is an excellent natural history museum with extensive collections of early Puebloan cultural artifacts that rivals any major natural history museum in the US.  We spent an hour enjoying the collection before taking a well-developed half-mile trail to the Escalante and Dominguez Pueblos, excavated sites that date from AD 1120.  One photo below from the museum shows a reconstruction of a "pitstructure," a type of habitation used by the Anasazi dating from AD 800.  After leaving the museum, we traveled to Moab where we will spend the night and watch some of the exciting women's basketball quaterfinals!

Pitstructure from 800 AD

Nike precursors

Ute Indians, descendents of Anasazi

Ute couple with baby

Rocky Mts. in background

Excavated site at Escalante Pueblo

We left Monument Valley after bidding goodbye to that very special place with fond regrets and the intentions to return once again in the future.  We then traveled east on HWY 64 across high desert (5,000 ft.) to Aztec, NM, and another site we had heard about: the Aztec Ruins National Monument.  About ten miles from Farmington, this World Heritage Site is another excavation of  an ancient indigenous site began in 1916 by Earl Morris, an archeologist with the American Museum, and completed about seven years later.  The site, misnamed as "Aztec," is actually the former home to the Puebloan people who lived in the area dating from about 1100 and then suddenly disappeared about the year 1290.  There are many theories about why they vanished (drought, war, disease, etc.) but nothing conclusive has been determined.  There is evidence of a culture with thousands of people living in a very complex society with an elaborate system of trade, crop cultivation, advanced achitecture and sophisticated spiritual and cosmological worship.  Some of the largest structures, called kivas, were circular, three-story centers for group assemblies.  They served as hubs for other rooms, in some instances over 500, which radiated out from the center.  Here are just some of the photos that attempt to give you a bit of the flavor of the place.

Column detail in main kiva

Roof timbers support enormous weight

Main kiva ceremonial chamber

Paula looking into kiva

A honeycomb of rooms

Many windows were precisely aligned with celestial events

Elaborate framing members

They must have been small people!

Some stones were a decorative green

Exterior of main kiva that is about 20 feet underground

Hundreds of excavated rooms

Main kiva chamber--walls were over 2-ft thick

Spent a relaxing day enjoying Monument Valley.  Took a couple of hikes: one in the morning into a box canyon that had sides about 200 to 300 feet high; and in the afternoon, we hiked to Arch Rock, an easy hour's hike behind the campsite.  Tomorrow we will head east to Aztec Ruins, about a four-hour drive, that is a memorial to the early Puebloan people who were misidentified by Mormons as Aztecs!  The area contains cliff dwellings and other signs of their culture that occupied the area in the 1100's.

Box canyon

Box canyon

Box canyon

Desert flower

Desert flower

Vegetation in cayon

Cactus

View from Arch Rock

Lichen

Gouldings Campground

Paula, Clifford under arch

Driving through Kayenta and into Monument Valley was a home-coming of sorts.  This is our fourth stay at Gouldings RV Park, and it feels like a return to an ashram for a spiritual retreat.  The surroundings are incredibly beautiful and never lose their freshness.  I am including a few photos that cannot adequately capture the beauty of the place.  We plan to spend at least two nights here and will try to take a self-guided tour tomorrow on a dirt road that circles through parts of the valley and brings the visitor closer to some of the monuments.

View from our campsite

One of the monuments

Another view from the RV Park

Our campsite

Drove from St. George to Kanab and stopped on the way at the Pipe Spring Memorial (several pictures are included).  This is a fascinating yet sad story of the Western Movement and the encroachment of the white man on the indigenous people.  There was a band of about 1,200 Kaibab Paiute Indians living in this lush valley near a good spring and gleaning native grasses, animals and vegetation as sources of food and material for clothing and shelter.  Then the Mormons arrived in the 1860's,  looking for a productive area to raise their cattle.  A large stone structure was built directly over the Indian spring, and the herds of Mormon cattle essentially destroyed the vast open grasslands that were so vital for the native tribe.  After only about thirty years, the original Paiute tribe was reduced to about 96.  We spent about an hour here listening to a diminutive ranger who spoke with a Tennessee accent, retelling the saga of the west. We then headed for the RV Corral. After a night in Kanab, we push on east to Monument Valley.

Typical Paiute Homestead

Workers lodge on ranch

Whitmore, the longhorn

Our Ranger

Typical Mormon table setting--they kneeled to pray first

Stove first used 1880

Cheese making room

Prairie left from cattle grazing

Winsor Castle--named after early Mormon 

Worker rooms with main "Winsor Castle" in background