Four Corners, Mesa Verde and Anasazi Heritage Center

Seems like this spring we are on a mission to check items off our bucket list. We did the Trinity Site and VLA in Socorro, then Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation. Mesa Verde is another place that was high on our list when we went on the road that circumstances always seemed to cause us to miss.  It is now checked off and was well worth the wait. When we looked for a place to stay near Mesa Verde we found that there was a lot to do around Cortez. The long range forecast looked good so we booked a week. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse, cold and s##w, so we did not get to do all we had planned.  

On our way to Cortez we stopped at Four Corners, the only place in the country where four states; Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, meet. We have been here before but if you look closely at our picture on the left you can see why we needed to return. When we looked at that picture we took on our first visit we noticed that someone was only in three states.

What a perfect entrance to Mesa Verde National Park. In addition to being a national park, Mesa Verde is also a World Heritage Site. While we were only eight miles from the RV park to the entrance and visitors center, it is over 20 miles from there to the cliff dwellings on a road over, under and around this mesa.

The visitors center has a few exhibits and is also a research center for archaeologists.  This is where you buy tickets if you want to get an up close look at the dwellings. Left are pots that have been excavated from the ruins. Most of them are broken beyond repair. The sculpture, center, shows a person using the hand and foot holds cut into the rock climbing to their home. Right are examples of native pottery and jewelry. 

The Chapin Archaeological Museum is the best place to learn about how the Puebloan people lived. They have excellent exhibits about the crops they grew, how they built their homes and the baskets and pottery they made.

These dioramas show how the early people changed from hunters and gatherers, to farmers living in pit houses, to building and living in these impressive structures we see today. These exhibits and many of the park facilities were built by the CCC during the Depression.

There are hundreds of ruins in the area (see Canyon de Chelly post) but only a few have been restored and even fewer are open for visitors. This is Spruce Tree House, the third largest, best preserved and easiest ruin to get to for a self guided tour. The bad news is it is closed because a 2015 geologic assessment found there is a great chance of a rockfall within the site and along the paths. Rockfalls were always a concern of the Puebloans. They would put prayer sticks in any cracks they found. If the stick fell out it was a warning that the crack was getting bigger and in danger of falling.

Cliff Palace, the largest dwelling with 150 rooms and 23 kivas, was discovered in 1888 by two cowboys looking for stray cattle. Over the next 18 years they lead tourists and explorers to the site. These early visitors often slept in the ruins and took artifacts. It was not until 1906 when Mesa Verde became a national park that it became illegal to remove items.  

Cliff Palace today is open to ranger lead tours starting in May. The tour is only a 1/4 mile long but requires climbing five 8 to 10 foot ladders and 120 uneven steps. This sites is undergoing continuing restoration and preservation. 

We opted for the tour of Balcony House and it did not disappoint. This ruin contained 38 rooms and two kivas.  This tour is the most adventurous and after going down a 100 step staircase, it required climbing and crawling to give you a real up close look. You can see the ladder on the right. 

Here is our group going up the 32 foot ladder to get to the ruins. This climb is not for the faint of heart. When people lived here they used hand and foot holds cut into the rock to get in and out.

At the top of the ladder you pass through a narrow tunnel to the main courtyard. Like a house today, they had different rooms for different purposes. The rooms in the background were for storage so they have small entrances and vent holes so the food would not spoil.

The view for Balcony House. While the people lived in these cliff dwellings where they did all the daily jobs we would expect; cooking, weaving, making tools and weapons, they grew their food on the top of the mesa. The building is 600 feet above the canyon floor. 

Kiva Plaza. The Anasazi, Ancestral Pueblo people, had lived and farmed on the mesa going back to 550 AD. They only began to build these cliff dwellings in the alcoves in early 1200 AD. By the early 1300's they had moved. While there is much speculation about why they left, no one knows for sure. It was probably a combination of drought and depletion of resources like wood, soil and water.     

The kiva is a common feature of every Puebloan structure. They were all similar in design being  round and dug into the ground. It would have been covered with a roof made of timbers, juniper bark and mud with a ladder through a hole in the roof to enter. The kiva was used for religious, utilitarian and social purposes. 

All the ruins have black streaks on the ceiling from years of fires. The structures were built using sand stone blocks that were cut with harder stones because they had not metals. The few dwellings that are open for the public have been restored and reinforced to preserve them. 

The roofs of  the buildings were made with logs and fire was a constant danger. Here a fire was so hot that the color of the stone has been permanently changed. 

This is typical of the size of the rooms. Like a modern family each family would have several rooms for various purposes. 

Once you get into the ruins you have to get out. That requires crawling through this narrow tunnel. There is a mock up of this tunnel at the visitors center that people can use to see if they fit before buying tickets for this tour. There are other tours that do not require going through a tunnel.

After the tunnel there are two more 10 to 12 foot ladders to get back to the top. We would recommend the Balcony House tour for anyone who wants a tour that gives you not only an up close look at the ruins but also what it was like for these ancient people to get in and out of their homes.

Below are several ruins that can be viewed from the Mesa Top Loop Road. 

At 28 feet high, Square House Tower is the tallest ruins in Mesa Verde.

This site was used for ceremonies, not for housing.

This one is unique as it was built on two rock shelves. There is some speculation that these structures were built off the mesa because of a threat from outside forces.

The Sun Temple was a religious site built on the top of the mesa.

These ruins are a mesa top Pueblo that was used before they began building the cliff dwellings.

These are ruins of a pit house that the earlier people built before they began building the stone pueblos. They would dig a hole and then erect a roof over the top. Entrance would have been through a hole in the roof. The exhibit on the right and the ones below were at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores that is part of the Canyon of the Ancient National Monument. This national monument, which has hundreds of ruins, is one the current administration wants to review and possibly open to mining and energy companies. 

The center has several excellent exhibits about how the Ancient Pueblo people lived. There is also a special exhibit about the Wetherill family. They are the people who found the ruins in 1888 while looking for their cattle. The center is a great place for an additional look at the story of the ancient Pueblo culture.

The Mesa Verde area is rich with Puebloan history and, unfortunately, we were unable to visit the Canyon of the Ancients because of the weather.  We very much recommend a visit to this beautiful and historic area.     

Family in DC - Friends in ABQ

As I said in an earlier post, we decided to fly to Washington, DC to see Nanc's younger sister who was recently diagnosed with cancer. It was her birthday and her other siblings were also there. We had a great weekend getting caught up and are happy to report that Michelle is doing very well. We left Albuquerque at 6am on Delta and were fortunate to make it to Washington as it was the day Delta had cancelled nearly 3,000 flights.

Jim, Nanc, Keith, Dave, Michelle, Judy and Braedon out to dinner. We have not all been together for a couple years so there sure was a lot of reminiscing and story telling going on. 

My new friend Spartacus, Sparta for short. He is a labradoodle who is more of a lap dog than the warrior his names implies. He did enjoy having many people to throw the ball and Frisbee.  

We did a day trip to Old Town in Alexandria. The weather was beautiful and we walked along the river and just soaked up the sun. It was the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival so we stayed out of downtown Washington. 

The four Scott siblings Judy, Dave, Nanc and Michelle. Judy drove in from Ohio, Dave flew in from Seattle and Nanc and I flew from Albuquerque.

Dave's grandson, Braedon, has become his traveling partner. They have been on several trips together. He is a great kid even though he is a Seahawks fan.  He sure has changed since we last saw him in 2009. 

Another day we visited National Harbor. This is The Awakening, a very neat sculpture that used to be in East Potomac Park in the city. We always took the seventh graders there on the DC field trip. 

National Harbor is a newer, commercial development with a convention center, hotels, shops and restaurants. My favorite store is Peeps. Here is the link to the Washington City Paper winners of the diorama contest that uses "Peeple" to celebrate current events. The contest has been a favorite of ours for years and it was neat seeing some of the entries.

A few of the statues at National Harbor; Henry Ford, Churchill and FDR, Rosie the Riveter, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Our yacht awaits. The Capital Wheel is 180 feet high and offers fantastic views of  the sites in nearby Washington. We opted to keep our feet on the ground.

The whole gang was on hand. We had a great time making Michelle's birthday a weekend long event. She has just started a new treatment and seems to be tolerating it much better than the chemo she had been undergoing. We were so happy that she is doing well and have already made plans to see her and Keith in North Carolina in July.

Family portrait Keith, Sparta and Michelle. We all had a fun time sharing stories and laughing about all the crazy things we have done over the years. They were great hosts putting up with all our foolishness. 

This was as close as we got to the city, taking off at National Airport. I love having a window seat to watch the world pass by and how the land changes as you fly over America.

I enjoy trying to pick out places I know. This is Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia. Nanc's skiing days ended at the bottom of Cupp Run, the long slope on the right, when she went down and tore up her knee.

 Flying east to west the land changes from forest to farm to prairie with the big crop circles showing where the climate gets dry. I could see a lot of windmills even in the oil fields of West Texas.

During our first year on the road we contacted Larry Stone whom I worked with at my first teaching job. At that time it had been nearly 30 years since we had seen him. We got together with Larry and Amy and now try to see them every time we are in Albuquerque. Since we were here for an extended stay we invited them for dinner and really enjoyed spending a few hours relaxing and getting caught up on all that has been happening in our lives. As we always say, seeing friends and family while traveling has become the best thing about our RV lifestyle.  

We are leaving Albuquerque and have reservations in Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley and Cortez, Colorado over the next couple of weeks. We will have limited Internet coverage at the first two stops this week but, hopefully, I won't get too far behind on the blog.

The Trinity Site and the VLA

We left Deming at 9:00 am, early for us, because afternoon winds were expected to be bad. This is something one needs to be aware of when traveling in the West. We have seen many reports often times when we have been out here of big rigs being blown over. We only had 160 miles to travel to get to Socorro where we wanted to visit the Trinity Site and the VLA. 

The day we went to Mexico from Deming we had considered a trip to Hatch, the chile growing capital of America. After driving through Hatch on our way to Socorro it looks like a return visit is in order. This is one of many stands selling everything chiles. 

When we visited Alamogordo in April 2009 we just missed the chance to visit the Trinity Site which is only open to the public the first Saturday of April and September. The Trinity Site is where the first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945. The entrance to the site is about twenty miles from Socorro and as you can see there was, as we expected, a wait. We were in line about two miles from the entrance when the gate opened at 8:00 am. It took about an hour to get to the gate and it was then a few more miles to the site on the White Sands Missile Range. 

Ground zero is fenced and has a maximum radiation level only ten times greater than natural background radiation. Many places on Earth have higher levels. An hour visit gives you less exposure than a cross country flight. The development of the bomb was the goal of the Manhattan Project that started in June 1942 in Oak Ridge, TN; Hanford, WA and Los Alamos, NM. 

Here I am inside what is left of Jumbo, a twenty foot long, 10 foot diameter bomb weighing 214 tons that was originally designed to contain the plutonium if the bomb failed to explode. As they gained confidence that the bomb would work, Jumbo was not used. It was place under a steel tower 800 yards from ground zero. Jumbo survived, the tower did not. In 1946 the Army used eight 500 pound bombs to blow the ends off.

Even the glow of radiation was not enough to keep Nanc warm as she used the Geiger Counter to check the radiation levels of several objects on display.

Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass, was formed at the site when the heat of the explosion melted the sand, turning it to glass. It has a very low level of radiation and can be bought at local rock shops. It is illegal to take any from ground zero.

Nanc at ground zero. While there was higher levels of radiation after the bomb exploded the site was "cleaned up" in the early '50s and the soil was buried.

Jim at ground zero. All that happened here was after WWII had ended in Europe and the Allies had already started preparation for the invasion of Japan. Success by the scientists here would mean that invasion, where thousands of Americans would have lost their lives, would not be needed. Since my father was back from Europe and training for that invasion I always felt I may not be here if the bomb had not been developed.

We arrived early so the crowd was not that big. Over 4,600 people visited the site this day. Many drive in from Socorro like we did, but you can also come in from Alamogordo, 85 miles to the south. Those coming from the south must meet and travel with an escorted convoy across the missile range.

The George McDonald ranch house two miles from ground zero is where the bomb core of plutonium was assembled in the master bedroom that had been turned into a clean room. After it was assembled the scientists loaded it into the back of a Chrysler Plymouth and drove it to the site.

The assembled bomb atop the 100 foot tower. The wires were connected to three bunkers 10,000 yards away where all the instruments to measure its yield were located. No one really knew what the explosion would be like.  Some predicted failure while others thought it would set off a chain reaction and destroy the world. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos National Lab, had the most accurate prediction of  the 19-kiloton explosion.

The bomb exploding from .006 second (top left), to .100 second (bottom left). Bottom right is the classic mushroom cloud 15 seconds into the explosion. A military policeman 10 miles away said the heat was like opening an oven. One of the scientists said it was like the heat of the sun on your face, then after a few minutes the real sunrise followed so they had two sunrises that day. The explosion was felt 160 miles away, breaking windows 120 miles from ground zero. The Army's cover story was a huge stockpile of munitions had exploded.

Just three weeks after this test at Trinity the first of two bombs was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th. Three days later Fat Man (above) was dropped on Nagasaki. While these bombs caused greater damage than any previous explosion, much of the radiation blew away because they were detonated at 2000 feet above the cities. On August 15th the Japanese surrendered, V-J Day, followed by the formal surrender on board the USS Missouri on September 2nd, bringing an end to a war that had started in Europe on September 1, 1939.

As we were leaving these protesters were at the entrance. They are down-winders, who were in the range of radioactive fallout from the explosion. Those who lived near Trinity and others who lived down wind from later tests in Arizona, Nevada and Utah have suffered increased rates of cancer. 

For anyone who grew up during the time of duck and cover drills like I did, a visit to the Trinity Site will be very interesting. 

The weather we had in Socorro was less than ideal with high winds, rain and even some snow at higher elevations. We did manage to squeeze in both the things we wanted to do without getting wet and the snow capped high plains and mountains were beautiful from afar.

The other thing on our to do list was a tour of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array (VLA). The array is 50 miles west of Socorro on the high plains at 7000 feet. From a distance they don't really look like much.

The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is 27 radio telescopes arranged in three groups which are turned on the same point in the universe together giving them more gathering ability. They can be moved to four different locations along these rails. When we were there they were at configuration D with all of them within a half mile of the center. At their furthest they are 11 miles from the center or 22 miles apart. 

The array was built between 1973 and 1980 and in addition to its scientific use has been used in TV shows and movies. They were featured in Carl Sagan's Cosmos and several movies including Contact staring Jodie Foster, who narrates the visitors center video.

They don't look big sitting on the plains with nothing else nearby but when you get up close they are huge. At 82 feet across and weighing over 200 tons it dwarfs Nanc standing under it.  

The dishes are moved to new locations every three or four months, using two specially built carriers that move on the double set of rails. Each move takes about three weeks depending on which configuration they are moving to. 

The sculpture reflects the three paths that the dishes move along. 

The results of some of the observatory's work. It is used to investigate galaxies, quasars, pulsars, supernovas, stars, suns, planets, and black holes. It was used to communicate with Voyager 2 in 1989 as it moved beyond Neptune. A very impressive array of work.  

The barn where the dishes are updated and the extra dish that is on stand by if there is a problem with one of them. In 2011 a major update was completed on all the dishes increasing there power to over 8,000 times better than the original 1970's technology.

WOW, we got to see them move!!! While we were there all the dishes moved to a new position. It was like watching a synchronized dance as they changed direction together. Very Neat!!!   

The VLA is a great stop in the New Mexico high desert. If you are there on the first Saturday of the month they have special guided and behind the scenes tours. The self-guided tour was very informative with an easy to follow guide.

The VLA is on open range so watch out for the cows. How cool it is, these dishes looking 26,000 light years, 150 quadrillion miles into the universe under the gaze of these cows. Socorro was a great little town with a couple good restaurants and I was able to scratch two things off my to do list.