San Juan Mountains

San Juan colors

We had seen the Aspen colors from the tops of the mesa in Mesa Verde. Today we traveled the San Juan Mountain scenic byway and got to see them close up. Our timing was pretty good – most of the Aspen were at peak colors. It was totally awesome! Our only wish was a little more sun – it was a fairly cloudy day, so that dulled the colors out. We stopped for the evening in Chalk Creek Campground near Buena Vista. We found a great dinner place in Buena Vista: Jan’s Restaurant, family dining with mostly handmade fare.

How to summarize the trip? As usual, the Utah parks were great, but crowded – always amazed at the variety of rocks and sandstone. We saw quite a few National Monuments around Indian dwellings: pit houses to pueblos, which had quite a variety of architectures depending upon when and where they were built. We gained a much better appreciation of desert plants and animals at the Desert Botanical Gardens, and Arizona – Sonora Desert Park (a key highlight of the trip). Almost sad to go home, but the weather will be changing pretty quickly and we lucked out for the most part with weather on this trip. If you'd like to see more pictures and video, there is a 15 minutes video available on youtube at https://youtu.be/bH0SFJNxAIQ 

Mesa Verde in fall colors

We spent most of yesterday traveling to Mesa Verde, arriving about 3 PM. Today, we visited Wetherill Mesa. First, we went to Step House, so named because of the steps that lead down from the cliff to the house. This is an interesting location because there are actually two archaeological sites here. The first consists of several pit houses which were occupied by basket weavers from approximately 600 AD. The second is a masonry pueblo building from 1200 AD.

Step House Pit House with restored roof

In the afternoon, I joined a ranger guided hike to Long House. The ranger was quite entertaining. We had an older newlywed couple on the tour, and he asked them to plan their reception. What would they serve for hor d’ouevres, drinks, and a main course. The woman was quite good:                 hor d’ouevres was rabbit with prickly pear juice; the main course was deer with yucca fruit and corn as a side dish.  The village here is almost 300 feet long and includes about 150 rooms and 21 kivas. This appears to be a ceremonial site since it has a large central plaza with seats – a great kiva. Many of the original walls are still intact with the beams that support them. In the back of the cliff is a seeping spring, with collecting holes to dip for the water.

Long House

We then went to the Chapin museum for the park movie (which actually did a great job of talking about the ancient Indian tribes in most of the southwest) and their collection of artifacts. The displays were from the 1930’s, but had a good cross-section of artifacts – pots, tools, clothes, food, baskets, etc.

That night Mesa Verde had a star party! They invited in an amateur astronomer, who has given star parties at other nearby National Parks. They set up about six telescopes and everyone, got a chance to see Saturn (with their rings perpendicular to earth). Then he pointed out the various constellations in the sky and told an Ancient Pueblo, Navajo, and Roman legend relating to the constellations. While we were watching the sky, both the International Space Station and an Iridium satellite passed by. The satellite flashed brightly for a couple seconds when the solar panels reflected the sun to us. They finished up by pointing each of the telescopes to a different object in the sky: the Andromeda Galaxy, and several star clusters. It was a fun night.