Saturday May 24, 2014

 

Non-Travel Day

 

We traveled west on US 16 to US 550 south, to the town of Aztec N .M., and the “Aztec Ruins National Monument”. From the late 1000s to the late 1200s ancestral Pueblo people at this location planned and built a settlement that included large public buildings and smaller structured for housing. The people left in the late 1200s, for reasons
unknown, speculation is that a drought over several years caused insufficient
food to support the community. The Spanish explores that first came upon the Pueblo people thought that they were part of the Aztec empire, and therefore named them as Aztec, the name stuck even though it was later proven that they were not Aztec. The ruins cover a vast amount of ground, most of which were looted by settlers to the area for building materials; but in 1878 an anthropologist came to investigate the site and start an excavation,
additional digs continued over the years and in 1923 it became a National Monument. Currently there are no plans for further excavation, the focus is on preservation. Our visit to the ruins was an educational andenlightening experience . It was our intention to continue on to “Chaco Culture National Historical Park” but after discovering that it required traveling over 13 miles of rough dirt road; so we decided not to visit the park, but rather travel to the town of “Shiprock, NM” and view “Shiprock Pinnacle”.   To reach the area we traveled over St Rd. 516, US 64 W, US 491 S and BIA 13 (Bureau of Indian Affairs), as we were on the Navajo Reservation, to get to within a reasonable distance to take several pictures. Shiprock Pinnacle is a huge rock that juts up out of the flat valley floor. As stated in the travel literature it is the most iconic landmark in New Mexico. Standing at 1,583 feet above the high desert plains,
it is the remains of a solidified lava cone. It was well worth the trip to see this fantastic natural wonder. From there we continued over BIA 13 crossing the Carrizo Mountains, this was a bonus ride that we had not planned, there were fantastic views of the mountains and surrounding valleys, with fantastic rock formations. We continued into Arizona on BIA 13, turning north on BIA 12, and then US 191 north to the town of Mexican Water where we picked up US 160 west to the Four Corners Monument. We stopped at the Monument, which is actually a Navajo Nation Park, as the 4 corners are within the Navajo Reservation. Here we had our picture taken straddling the 4 states of CO, NM, AZ and UT. It was not what I expected, but it was worth the time we took to stop. After leaving the Monument we continued over US 160 west back to the camper, stopping for dinner in the town of Cortez. It was truly a wonderful day.