Chaco Canyon
Decisions, decisions... Rain is in the forecast for Tuesday, which puts a stop to all plans on the clay roads surrounding Farmington. With water, they turn into a slick, slimy quagmire. And, of course, all our destinations in this area include driving dirt roads to get to the badlands areas. Today, we had to decide what we wanted to explore before the rains come.
It should have been a relatively easy decision, but nothing has been easy about this trip. We finally decided to drive to Chaco Canyon in the Explorer, sleep overnight in a tent, and then return home Monday before the rains would make the road impassible. Chaco Canyon was the center for trade and commerce in North America from about 850 A.D. until 1150 A.D. When scientists from the Smithsonian excavated the ruins in the early 1920's, they found skeletons of parrots and macaws from Mexico. They also found conch shells and shell necklaces from the Pacific coast. It took us two days to drive from the coast to Farmington. Think how long these traders must have traveled to get to Chaco Canyon, and much of it was across desert! There are ruins all over the Four Corners area, but nothing on the scale of Chaco Canyon.
Our first task was to take everything out of the Explorer so it could be re-packed for a tent-camping trip. We had stuff all over the motorhome. It was almost impossible to even move around. Then, it was time to re-pack the Explorer with sleeping bags, a tent, BBQ, etc. I had created a tent-camping checklist before we left home, so we had a plan. We "ran the checklist" and then took one last look at what we needed for sleeping and our meals. We tried to make sure we didn't miss any details. It was about two hours later that we realized we had hot dog buns, mustard, BBQ sauce, and relish but no hot dogs. We were going to be eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly!
The 21-mile "road" from the main highway to Chaco Canyon was everything I had heard. About 4 miles were paved, 13 miles were good county-maintained gravel road, and 9 miles were an un-maintained washboard, rutted, dirt road that tried to rattle all our fillings loose. AND it crossed a large wash that floods after heavy rains. As soon as we reached the National Historical Park, all the roads were paved and smooth. The road getting there definitely limits visitors. I think it's planned that way.
The first stop was the campground to get a campsite. Without a campsite, we would have 2 hours to check out the park before we had to turn around and drive back out over that 21-mile road. We found a decent campsite, put up the tent, and started the Chaco Canyon loop drive. There is only one road in the park and that is a 10-mile loop of the valley. Chaco Canyon is all about the ruins. There is nothing else in the park to do or see.
The park closes at sunset, so we had about 2 hours to photograph. We decided explore Pueblo Bonito first. It's one of the largest ruins and the late afternoon light provided warm light and great shadows. The classic shot at Pueblo Bonito is a series of doorways in the interior of the ruins. We eventually found the entrance to the interior of the ruins that led to the room where we could look through all the doorways. We had the area to ourselves, so we could take our time getting the shots and enjoy the wonder of such an ancient ruin. After shooting the doorways from one end, we walked through the rooms to shoot from the opposite side the building. From this end, the second floor of the ruins was more evident. My only complaint was that they could have made the doorways a bit taller.
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We finished our tour of Pueblo Bonito just as the sun neared the horizon, so we returned to our campsite before the rangers locked the gates. We got the tent all set up just as the area switched to pitch black. We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by lantern light and watched the Big Dipper sink below the horizon to the east. The moon was a half-moon, so the Milky Way was only a smudge crossing the sky. If we had been serious about shooting the night sky, we could have stayed up a couple of hours and taken advantage of Chaco Canyon's status as one of the few National Parks that is an International Dark Sky Park. Because we couldn't shoot over the ruins, we weren't that interested in shooting the Milky Way.
We haven't been tent camping for at least 10 years. We put up the tent like a couple of pros, but getting situated in the sleeping bags on our air bed was closer to a comedy act. We tried to make the air bed softer by not putting in too much air, but then it seemed intent on dumping us off and onto the tent floor. By the time I got in my sleeping bag, zipped the zipper, and thrashed around trying to get comfortable, I was exhausted. It was crazy! I was glad no one was filming us.
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