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.