Santa Fe

We're almost to the Balloon Fiesta, but first we stopped for a couple of days at a Corps of Engineers park in Pena Blanca, New Mexico.  It's about 20 miles from Albuquerque and half way between that city and Santa Fe.  We are all going to the festival camp area together so we'll be parked as a group.  This gives us a chance to do some sight seeing in Santa Fe.  The COE park only has power and water so we did laundry at a laundromat for the first time in I don't know how long.  Needed to do that since the festival camp is dry.

We went for lunch and window shopping in Old Town Santa Fe...

Above is  the central square around which most towns in this area are built.


Next is Tom by the covered  walkways which surround the Governor's Palace.  It is now a museum and shops for tourists.







The main attraction here is the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, it is open and they allow photos of the inside.

It is simply gorgeous,

The stained glass windows were breath taking.

And this is the round window you see from the outside in the first picture.  The 

tubes are pipes for the organ.

Sun Temple

This is the last stop for Mesa Verde National Park.  We'll be leaving Colorado for New Mexico.

 Sun Temple is built on top of the cliff above all the other pueblos.  The picture above is Sun Temple from across the valley standing above Cliff Palace.  The cliff face below it over there and us over here is filled with all the cliff dwellings we've looked at so far.

This is a close up with the telephoto lens from across the valley.









This is what the walls look like in all the cliff dwellings.

They have little alcoves marked so you can see inside the pueblo without doing any damage to the ruins.

This was the water cistern (above).  Below shows one of the ways they conserve the ruins by sealing the tops of the walls.  This prevents the weather from wearing the bricks down any more than necessary.  Remember, we are at 8,000 feet elevation and there is a lot of snow on top of the mesa.

This is the valley from one end.  Inside those walls are dozens of ruins of cliff dwellings.

Next stop:  New Mexico.

Pit House

Before they built into the cliffs, the Ancient Puebloans built what we now call Pit Houses, like this one at the Step House.  We've seen other pit house ruins at Verde Valley, but none as extensive and well preserved as these.

This one is being partially reconstructed to demonstrate how it was made and make assumptions about how they lived.  You can see similarity to the other pueblos in the shape of the rooms and the troughs and grinding stones.

The park has put this site under a roof to protect and preserve it, but also to allow a partial reconstruction of the roof  like the Ancestral Puebloans would have put over part of the buildings.  The roof will be constructed of logs from the spruce and juniper trees native to the area and mud like the bricks.  

This is what it looks like outside the building at the other original foundations of the pit house site.  These walls are all original. 

In the cliff face...

Most of the ruins are not available for close up viewing.  There are so many in the cliff faces of this valley you can take a 27 mile trip up one side and down the other to see them from viewing spots.

The Ancient Puebloans were farmers.  They cleared the mesa tops above their settlements for crop fields of corn, beans and squash.  The land below was usually left overgrown to protect the water source which flowed through the valley and hid the paths up to the village.

Most of these ruins are named:  New Fire House, Fire Temple, Square Tower House, etc.  Fire Temple has what appears to be a dance plaza with a fire pit and toe holds in the cliff to an upper area.   

Square Tower House was like a 4 story apartment building where the dwellings radiated out to the sides from the entrance tower.

Looking at the stonework, mortar, and architectural  details used in the construction of these buildings without benefit of "modern" tools is amazing.

It was simply staggering, the number of ruins in the cliff.  The staff of the park, including archeologists and conservationists continue to work on preserving the ruins and discovering as much as possible about the people who lived here nearly 1000 years ago.

Mesa Verde - Cliff Palace

At Spruce Tree House, anyone can get up close and personal.  However, at the other sites you must be on a Ranger guided tour.  Some of the sites are no longer available for a visit even with a Ranger because all human contact does some damage, even with care and conservation techniques.

This is the view from the platform where everyone can experience the wonder of this place.  From here a Ranger will take a group of up to 30 people on the tour.  Caution, there is climbing and tight places to navigate.  Beware if you have fear of heights and tight places.

You climb down the cliff face on a fairly steep, but protected path and come out on the open plateau which houses the pueblo.  The Ranger spends about half an hour with the group, explaining the life and culture as it is now understood. 

Now comes the fun part, and the reason I wouldn't even think about the tour (much to Tom's disappointment).  To get back to the rim of the cliff face you have to climb a 35 foot wooden ladder (not a modern ladder) through a chimney-like hole.  Claustrophobia, anyone?

 

 See the people in the lower left corner?  They are headed for the exit.

Now, if you look close, you'll find someone in blue in the lower right and someone else climbing out of the exit toward the top center.  Not for me, thanks.

Spruce Tree House, part 2

Spruce Tree House is the third largest cliff dwelling in the park containing 130 rooms and 8 kivas for about 100 people.

The Kiva is a round room which was used for ceremonies.  The top picture of these 3 is one of the kivas without a roof, the one on the right is the ladder entrance, and the one just above is the same entrance as seen from outside. There is one kiva that people can go into so Tom climbed down into it.

 

One of the Rangers heard us playing the flutes and stopped to talk.  She told us the archeologists found a wooden flute in the rubble that was about 2 feet long in 3 pieces about 600 years old.