Hovenweep National Monument

We set out on a long drive over paved, but bumpy roads around noon yesterday. Our original intent was to visit Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. We first needed to stop off at the RV park office where the park owner convinced us to spend our time at Hovenweep National Monument. As it turns out, Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument. The monument was established in June of 2000 in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument. Okay...so we were game.

We headed out across acres and acres of farm land. As we drove along, a herd of deer could be seen off to the left side of the road. They were bounding across the field, heading toward the road. They paused just briefly when they saw our truck.

We stopped to watch as four of them crossed the road right in front of us. They jumped the fence on the other side of the road, as if it weren't even there...except the little one, who went under the fence.

The longer we watched, the more we saw, although they stayed off to both sides of the road.

In the distance, there was quite a rain storm. We were just hoping to avoid the rain. It kind of stayed put in this one area, and eventually, we drove on past it.

About 30 miles later, we reached the national monument. It's located right on the border between Colorado and Utah, and for portions of our outing yesterday, we crossed over into Utah.

Here's a little information about it. Sorry about that black smudge in the corner of this image. Sometimes the iris on my camera lens doesn't open completely...not sure why. the missing word there is "Ute."

Keep in mind that the Ancient Pueblo people began building these villages during the 10th Century. The images I'm about to show you depict structures built between the 10th and 12th Centuries. An industrious people, here is some information about some of the things they did in order to adapt to their environment.

We watched a 20-minute video about their lives and about the structures they built, and then set off on a short hike to see them. There was a longer loop trail (2 miles). We intended to walk the whole thing, but then the heat and bright sun discouraged us from going all the way. You can see the loop and the portions we walked in the image below. When we reached the far side of the loop from Hovenweep Castle, we turned around and headed back.

It was an easy trail. I had my hiking pole along to help me with some of the bigger steps up and down. My knee is feeling pretty good, but it's unstable, and I don't trust it on big steps. The hiking pole is more a portable hand rail than anything else, and I was glad I had it along.

At the first lookout, we could look across the canyon and see the "twin towers" along with some of the other smaller dwellings. Not all have been excavated, and so some of them appear just as rock rubble, but they are easy enough to pick out. You can see one near the middle of the image below.

The video explained that the towers were built over pits, and some of them were built atop cliff dwellings. You can see one of the cliff dwellings in the image below.

The masonry is truly astounding. Think of the effort involved in shaping and fitting all those rocks together so perfectly.

The real draw of this hike was Hovenweep Castle, which is the largest among the structures here. I took many pictures from different angles.

The thinking is that the larger structures were used for religious ceremonies and gatherings, but the small "portals" near the top would indicate they were also used defensively.

In the canyon below was this very tall tower, about 3 stories high. It's hard to get any scale here.

Here's another shot from closer up.

In the next series of images, I was walking around Hovenweep Castle, taking pictures from all angles.

We walked around to the other side of the canyon to get a look at it from there. Along the way, we passed the "checkdam" you see below. Look near the bottom of the sign, and you'll notice a pile of rocks. On the other side of the small gully there is another pile. They created these small dams to collect pools of water.

From the other side of the canyon, Hovenweep Castle looks like this:

It gives you a better sense of how these structures were built above cliff dwellings. Also, some of the structures were double-walled, presumably for insulation and protection from the elements. It's hard to see on a two-dimensional image, and so I've indicated where the second wall of the structure below is located.

We were getting hot and hungry by that time, and so we elected to turn around and head back to the visitor center. We headed back into town and back to the RV park. After dinner, we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

Day is done.

The kitties are liking it here. It's warm enough to keep the catio window open all night long. They keep one another entertained, and at their best moments, they'll even share the catio and the cubby.

They've been amazingly good travelers this trip. Smitty has been out for a couple of walks at this park, but we're always on the lookout for bad woofies. (To be clear, all woofies and most people are bad.)

Today we have a short day of driving to get us up to Montrose, Colorado, where we'll stay while we visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. This will be our third attempt to see the park. The first time was in 2006, when we also visited Mesa Verde National Park. I can't remember what dissuaded us back then...probably we were just sight-seen out by that time. The second time was in 2013 when flooding in Colorado caused us to run for our lives. We might have seen the park then, but the forecast was for rain, and we'd had quite enough of that in Estes Park, thank you. This time, I think we might get the job done.

That's all I have to tell you about Hovenweep. I'll tell you about the second quilt shop in a separate post...coming right up.