Wordless Wednesday: on the horizon

[apologies for dirty windshield]

Expedition

You'd think we were taking off on a month-long trek down the Amazon, given the amount of gear Henry jammed into our van. This is just a part of it, the photo taken when we stopped for the night Sunday in Roswell, NM (sorry, no funny alien photo-opps were available):

But it was a complicated trip preparation, what with planning for the boating that will take place in 2 weeks, and the camping involved in that journey, minor shorter trips before then, materials needed for relaxing and working in Garfield, and clothing for 40's-90's. So I thought you might be interested in seeing some photographic evidence of this monumental undertaking.

The boat gear was the most elaborately planned, and the most frustrating for me, since I couldn't really help with it. Any preparation work that I did would undoubtedly need to be re-done, properly, by Henry, so I just stood around a lot and ran and fetched things.

The picture on the left shows a sample of the boating equipment that was packed. Although we ended up not taking the pink raft, and some of the other items in the shot, like my bicycle, were also left at home. But there was still plenty to weigh down our trusty van rather seriously.

Here are the boats awaiting departure in the back yard, along with a deflated raft and a cataraft frame, that were securely tied down to our trailer. The trailer that makes things like motel parking and visiting Sonic drive-ins rather interesting. There are two canoes, although you can probably only see one in the photo.

So here we are.

Being in Salida/Garfield feels more and more like coming home all the time. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to make two trips here this summer. We're talking a bit more seriously about making this our retirement destination. And what a great place it would be! Not the least of its many attractions is the fine library where I'm sitting and using free wifi:

I will try to get here for more posts in the next week.

Colorado, part 2, tomorrow

Forecast temperatures for San Antonio are in the upper 90's for the next few days so it is really a great time to be heading north!

My second trip to Colorado this summer, with Henry this time, will begin sometime tomorrow. [First early morning, then noon, have been mentioned as departure times...so I'm hoping for before dark]

We'll be spending about 10 days in beautiful downtown Garfield, relaxing, taking care of some real estate and cabin maintenance business and—hopefully—getting onto some local lakes and rivers to practice handling our new raft. Prior to, that is, taking it on a 3 night paddle on the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico.

I bought myself some new water shoes that I'm quite excited about (see at left). So I personally am just about ready to go. However, the living room is still full of only partially organized boat gear, and Henry is—guesses, anyone?—finishing up some stuff at the office. So who knows when we'll get away.

But we have river scenery like this to look forward to on the Chama, so the stress of preparation will soon be forgotten. These pictures are from Henry's trip there last summer, which you can read about in abundant detail in these blog posts of his: day 1 • day 2 • day 3.

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My blogging might be somewhat intermittent for the next week or so, but I expect to have material for weeks of good posts by the time we get home.

Wordless Wednesday: Durango elegance

Wanna learn to speak Korean?

Maybe you have Korean business associates you'd like to impress? Or, inspired by a great photo collection on the web, you've decided to visit Seoul? Whatever your motivation, you can't do better than getting a start with this wonderful book:

I'll make it easy for you: just follow this link to Amazon to make your purchase (and it would be a bargain at twice the price!).

If you examine the photo closely you might see one reason why my recommendation is so enthusiastic. Yes, that's my little boy listed as co-author! [But, sincerely, it's a neat book that really would be a good beginning Korean book for anyone wanting to learn the language.]

I was a proud mom 'way back when, certainly, but even so probably thought the likelihood of my little darling eventually being a published author might be something of a long shot.

However, his creative output the last few years has been increasingly impressive, as readers of his blog and his articles for Matador (a wonderful travel site) can certainly attest. And we couldn't be prouder of our now-published author.

What's even neater than the fact that he co-wrote the book, is that his wife provided its charming illustrations, perfect matches for the breezy, conversational—yet not over-simplified—tone of the book's instruction. Here's an example of her work:


What an extremely talented couple! Who wouldn't be proud and happy to be related to them?

the co-author and illustrator

Tucked under the Green Table

.... that's where the Ancestral Pueblo people that lived in the four corners area of the American southwest built their beautiful, sturdy, and somewhat mysterious cities.

Conventional wisdom, at least as dispensed in my youth, would have suggested that there weren't any cities in North America in the 1200's, but after standing at the Sun Point overlook in Mesa Verde National Park, I would beg to disagree.

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The scenery in national parks is of course a major attraction but there's deeper enjoyment when you can also learn some history and culture while you're there. And since my storehouse of Native American historical knowledge is woefully slim, I augmented it a great deal on our all-too-brief visit to Mesa Verde. I definitely recommend a longer stay there if you can manage it, but you can see and learn a lot in just a few hours if that's all you've got.

It's always a good idea to make a park visitor center your first stop, especially if you're pressed for time, and we got a lot of useful information to plan our morning at the very aptly named Far View Center (see Joan enjoying the scenery from the center's balcony). There was also a really interesting exhibit about Gustav Nordenskiöld, the very young amateur archeologist who did much early excavation in the area (and who also made off with some artifacts from the then-unprotected sites).

We decided that we really didn't have the time to take one of the intensive, ranger-guided tours of the larger ruins, much as we wanted to. But there is a well-preserved site that you can see relatively quickly by taking a self-guided tour. So we opted for that plus a drive around the Mesa Top loop road, which would afford views of most of the major cliff dwellings as well as a selection of the mesa-top sites that provide historical context for appreciating the under-cliff complexes.

First stop was the Chapin Mesa Museum, for more orientation. It's also just adjacent to the do-it-yourself site, Spruce Tree House. The Museum was very interesting, with artifact exhibits showing what life was like during the different phases of habitation in the history of the area. I particularly liked the beaded items on the right (which are modern products showing historical influences), as well as a series of really interesting dioramas that were originally made by CCC workers during the 1930's (probably not the same guys that made the trails in Mammoth Cave, but it was the same program).

Spruce Tree House is a really beautiful complex of buildings, offering an up-close look at how life might have been for the folks living in the cozy confines of the natural alcove.

There are exposed kivas (like the one on the left) and one that has been reconstructed to give visitors a taste of what they might have been like in use. You can see Joan descending into the demo kiva. [She's just mugging for the camera...it really wasn't scary.]

You can wander through the site on your own, but there are rangers there to answer questions (and also, I'm sure, to keep people from doing damage to the site). These knowledgeable folks are always keen to enrich visitors' experiences. Here's a ranger showing some kids how to use the replica metates that are set into depressions in the rocks, where the real ones doubtless used to be. The pueblo dwellers used this technology to grind corn, and the modern kids are eager learners.

You can also get a comprehensive view at Spruce Tree House of how the society worked, since the top of the mesa was important, too. That's where that corn was grown. Our guidebook indicated that there were indentations and bumps down the cliff face for climbing up to the fields and descending back down to the buildings. Pretty intense rock-climbing, especially if carrying bundles of grain for the metate operators!


We got another, even more spectacular view of the mesa top on the loop road of the same name. This picture was taken at the Sun Temple site, looking back at the Sun Point viewpoint, where I took the photo at the top of this post. What an amazing cliff! A wonderfully scenic location for this great conurbation—Joan called it the New York City of peak Mesa Verde culture.

The dwelling at the top of the post is the Cliff Palace, the largest site in the park and one of the ones that you can see close-up on one of the long scheduled tours—definitely on my list for a return visit. And here's another view from the Sun Point overlook, showing one of the smaller sites in Mesa Verde's New York:
Another viewpoint along the loop road shows you Square Tower House, a dwelling which features the tallest building among all the cities of the area. Unfortunately it's not open for tours, but you get a great view from the overlook:

The Mesa Top road loop gives you a good variety of views and learning experience at sites on the mesa top, most of which pre-date the alcove dwellings. Unfortunately, due to the dunking my camera suffered on the Rockcastle River in Kentucky earlier this summer, my photos don't get time-stamped, which makes it hard for me to match up the photos with the sites described in our guidebook. So I'll have to show these two samples of the archeological sites on the loop without postive identification. You'll notice the nice protective structures around the digs: protective of the sites as well as the visitors. It was very nice to have shade on these stops!

This next site is distinctive enough that I'll attempt a tentative id. I think it is Sun Point Pueblo:

As much as we learned about these clever and industrious people, one of the main themes of all the educational materials on display at the park is that archeologists don't have answers to the really big questions about them.

Why did they move into the alcoves, when their all-important areas of cultivation remained on the tabletops? Defense? Better shelter from the elements? Desire for closer communities?

Then, why did they move away? The cities were such marvels—efficient, beautiful, sturdy—and obviously such large investments of time, effort and expense. Why leave them? By 1300, the cities were ghost towns. At one time, it was thought that the people simply vanished.

I can remember hearing of their mysterious disappearance when I was younger and imagined that they had died of some strange illness or, more fancifully, were somehow transported from their cozy dwellings to some other plane of existence. That's when they were called Anasazi, but now the preferred terminology is "Ancestral Puebloans," because we don't think they vanished at all, but simply moved and became the later Pueblo cultures of the southwest.

They perhaps left their lovely cities because of prolonged drought, new threats from hostile neighbors, exhausted soil...or some combination of these and other reasons. But even if the big questions concerning their lives and societies will never be answered, we can certainly enjoy and admire what they left behind, as well as the starkly beautiful scenery that's still there today.

Road trip clouds

Ever notice that you notice clouds more when you're on vacation?

looking east from the deck in Garfield, Colorado

Or is it just me? I certainly think the sky almost always looks more glorious when we're on the highway, and my recent trip west was no exception. I just couldn't help but take lots of cloud photos along the way, in addition to some while relaxing at my destination.

Maybe my mind is just free from the busy trivialities of daily life once I hit the road, and so it's free to appreciate things like clouds? At any rate, I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

clouds and red rocks on the road north of Durango, Colorado

might get some rain near Trinidad, Colorado

clouds settling in near Garfield

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two sunsets from the Garfield deck: one with almost no clouds....

and one with lots more...

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puffy whites in New Mexico

shades of gray in Texas

and don't forget to look east as well as west at sunset!