Chaco Culture

Chaco Culture National Historic Park was a hidden gem. Very well hidden. You have to pass through a lot of mostly empty Reservation land, and then drive on a very long, VERY poorly graded dirt road to get to the park. It was by far the least busy place we visited. Chaco Culture is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that has an exceptional array of ancient pueblo dwellings, both with quantity and quality. This area was a major trade hub from around AD 900-1150. There are several "great houses" in the area that were pretty much a 1 building village. We went on a self guided tour of the biggest of them, Pueblo Bonito. 

A wonderfully informative diorama in the visitor's center. They just finished construction on the visitor's center and there were some blank display cases. 

Pueblo Bonito! The structure was constantly renovated and expanded when it was in use. It had at least 650 rooms and was 4 stories high in some places. Tragically, some of it was destroyed by the appropriately named "threatening rock" a few decades ago. 

There was a nice paved path leading up to the great house, so we decided to take the stroller. 

It was a huge mistake. We didn't realize that we could walk through a ton of the structure, which was definitely not built with accessibility in mind!

A lot of the doors were T shaped

It was super interesting looking at the corners and figuring out where the additions were made. They were very creative with their windows and doors. 

Colby was quite vigilant about making sure Claire didn't fall into a kiva.  

His concerns were valid- our kids have not been trained to navigate terrain with huge pits all over the place

Just a little pueblo dancin'

The self guided tour booklet was awesome. Definitely get one if you are visiting.

This room had the ORIGINAL CEILING. Those sticks have been there for almost a thousand years!

Aaron cheesing with some very old sticks. I loved that you could see how they used layers of sticks with different thickness to make  a sturdy floor for the next story of the structure. 

Pueblo People

 We camped at Gallo Campground. There were several small pueblo ruins along the cliff right next to the campground. The cliffs also featured a large population of Swallows that were fun to watch as they swooped in and out of their tiny mud nests on the cliff face. 

Some of the ruins at the campground. They were much smaller than the great houses- probably home to a farmers family.

 As we were wrapping up dinner, the sky made a rapid pivot from cloudy to “SEEK SHELTER NOW!” We quickly threw everything in the vans and jumped in our tents. The wind was howling and the lightning got closer and closer. There was one lightning strike that must have hit the cliff just a few hundred feet away from us because it was LOUD. It was loud enough to wake up Annie, who cried for a few seconds then passed out again (shout out to our angel baby). Elliot required a family snuggle pile and many soothing words. This is actually one of my favorite memories of the whole trip. I would never choose to go camping in a storm like that again. The wind was strong enough that it was whipping sand and rain through the mesh parts of the tent under the rain fly, so we were all a little moist. (The Hays had it way worse- part of their tent flooded and Claire woke up soaking wet) Despite that, there was something great about being able to make Elliot feel safe enough in our windblown tent that he could fall asleep as the storm raged on around us. 

Breakfast at Gallo Campground

Just in case Gallo Campground wasn't memorable enough, we had our major injury of the trip here as well! It was Sunday morning. We were getting the kids dressed in church clothes and breaking down camp. Robb was rummaging through the cooking supplies bin and accidentally grabbed the knife that had slipped out of it's (wholly inadequate) oven mitt sheath. He cut his thumb pretty deeply. Lakin bandaged him up, and we set about breaking down the rest of the camp. It quickly became apparent that we are much slower with Robb out of commission! We weren't as familiar with how to break down their tent and how to tetris all their stuff into their very packed van. By the time we finished, we were too late to make it to church. We decided to split up. The Hays headed to Santa Fe to find an Urgent Care (they didn't want to go to the closer by one in the Indian Reservation), while the Bloods made a stop at Taos Pueblo before meeting back up in Santa Fe.

Mesa Verde

We now begin what could be called the Ancient Cliff Dwelling section of the road trip. Apparently many tribes throughout the American southwest all started building these awesome cliff dwellings around the year 1200. They were all abandoned for mysterious reasons about 200 years later. 

The first stop was Mesa Verde. There are 3 tours available there that take you to the best preserved pueblos, although there are as many as 600 dwellings throughout the park. We chose Balcony house, which is the "adventurous" option. The tour includes climbing a 32-foot ladder and crawling through a 12-foot tunnel. The tunnel was the only way in or out of the settlement back in the day. Those people must have been fit! The doors are so small that even exiting your room required some athletic exertion. It is crazy imagining how much effort it would have taken to haul a deer up or down the cliff face to take it back home. 

Stock photo of Balcony House from across the canyon

This was definitely not a kid friendly adventure, so we took turns watching the kids.

A Kiva. I still don't understand the purpose of these rooms despite the tour guide's explanation and several informational signs. 

Balcony House has 40 rooms, which makes it a medium size cliff dwelling for the region.

The balcony! This was a 2 story building. You could walk along the balcony to reach the upper rooms. 

A window from one plaza to the other. One plaza had nothing to stop you from falling off the edge of the cliff. The other had a small wall on the edge. Apparently this was the "nursery" where babies could crawl. This terrified me, but the tour guide said that they have found shockingly few human remains that died from falling off the cliffs. They dumped all sorts of trash over the edge, but the people who lived here learned to be sure footed.  

One advantage of living under the overhang is that water percolates through the porous sandstone, then seeps out in a little pool when it hits a layer of hard rock. The result was that they had a little water alcove right in the settlement!

Kiva selfie

The tunnel exit.
Apparently Balcony House is notorious for all the butts that end up being photographed on the ladder and tunnel. 

One other cool thing that happened at Mesa Verde is that we ran into Clarice Bird from the stake at our campground! She and her husband are retired. They decided to spend the summer travelling across the country with a canoe that they strap to the top of their SUV. They have a motorcycle in a cargo carrier on the back of the SUV that they drop off at the end point on the river, then drive to the start point to unload the canoe. When they finish their trip, Brother Bird jumps on the motorcycle to go get the car. Genius! Aaron and I were very inspired by this retirement plan, except we fully plan on having a self driving camper van. We'll take our time road tripping between all our kids to visit them and see lots of sites on the way. We will be very disappointed if self driving RVs still don't exist in 30 years. 

Black Canyon

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was one of my least anticipated stops. I had certainly never heard of it before- although I admit that my Colorado national park knowledge is very limited to begin with. Report- it was very pretty.

Annie enjoyed stealing Ramen from bowls that were placed anywhere remotely near her. 

Colby was very stressed by his ramen, but consented to eat some when it was put in a cracker sandwich. 

The campground was right in the park. We were tired and not too motivated for detailed exploration, so we just drove to a nearby overlook. The canyon exceeded our expectations! It was also a butt-clencher. The log walls were NOT close enough together to prevent a kid from falling to their death. We had the kids hold hands and stay in the center of the platform while we snapped some pictures, then skedaddled back to the campground. 

Great Sand Dune National Park

Great Sand Dune NP was such a strange place. You drive through miles and miles of generally flat Colorado sagebrush type land, heading towards some mountains. Then all of a sudden there is a mini Sahara popping up out of nowhere. The dunes were huge and stretched for miles. These are the tallest sand dunes in North America. The dunes seem so abrupt and out of place. 

You can see the dunes in the background. Also the rain clouds that forced us to hang out in the van after putting the kids to sleep.

Two cute kids in a tree

... who both needed to be rescued. You can see Alice in this picture. Elliot was higher up. #toobrave

 Our morning on the dunes was definitely the most fun of the trip! We rented some sand sleds and sand boards. I was awful at the sand boards. All the other adults made it down their first time, but I never figured out how to stop spinning backwards and falling. 

  

There was much smack talk leading up to the great Aaron vs Robb sand board race. Aaron is very happy to remind everyone that he won both races. He even whipped out his victory dance afterwards. Robb, Aaron, and Alice hiked over to a bigger dune. It was crazy steep. Robb went down it on the board. I could hear him screaming "I'M GOING TO DIE" halfway down. Aaron and Alice followed on their sled. They were booking it. I was scared watching their tiny racing forms, but they made it to the bottom without falling. The other fun game we played was "jump off the cliff." How you play is you jump off a cliff 😅 The sandy slopes make for a soft landing, but it is mentally hard to jump off the ridge into the air as far as you can. 

"mining" for sand balls. The sand gets wet and clumps together a few inches below the surface.

Dads in all their magesty

Colby was not as good of a pack mule as we hoped he would be. 

The kids would have happily played in the wash station for hours.

Chateau de Fleur & Rocky Mountain

Our next stop was an Airbnb in Loveland, Colorado called "Chateau de Fleur." We had a great time getting Elliot to attempt to pronounce it. It was almost as challenging as getting Elliot to take a shower (there wasn't a bathtub and he was definitely due for a scrubbing)

The days immediately after grocery runs where we had produce were the best

A Colby torture session, aka "dinner." Who knew that pasta and mashed potatoes could be so horrifying?

 Our next stop was Rocky Mountain National park. We were going to go to a lake, but it was full or closed or something. We re-routed to Alpine Ridge Trail instead. It was my first taste of Alpine Tundra. The hike was only about a half mile, but it was grueling in the high altitude. 

Another scenic stretch behind our pals in BMV1091

The temperature was so weird at the high elevation. I was hot and cold at the same time. Also very out of breath.

Can you tell it was windy?

Money shot- Elevation sign with a nice Elk meandering by

The only plants this high up were mosses, grasses, and wildflowers.

Perhaps he is pondering about how this tundra is probably similar to the tundra inhabited by his Swedish ancestors.
Or perhaps he is begging for more fruit snacks.