The Great Basin

What exactly is the Great Basin? It's not a sink. But in a way, it kind of is.
Although a number of rivers flow into the Great Basin, none flow out to
the ocean. Hence, the name Basin.


It's also a very very large desert. In fact, it's the largest desert in the
United States, covering approximately 190,000 square miles. To give
you a comparison, England is only just over 50,000 square miles.
It's big.


It's also a land of wide wide wide open spaces. If you're looking to
get away from it all, this is the place. My history teacher in high school
told us that the Native Americans in the Great Basin basically ate dirt.
I scoffed at the time, but now I almost believe it. Although we drove
through the Great Basin during the day, I can imagine what it looks
like at night, with a moonless sky. Imagine the sky that your
grandparents or great-grandparents saw. No light pollution. The
clearest sky you will ever see. That's what the night sky in the Great
Basin looks like.


Finally, this pretty much sums up the Great Basin. There are no services
available for a long long distance. We are lucky that we can cover this
distance in about an hour. The early pioneers would have taken almost
a week to cover 80+ miles. There is just nothing out there.

If I had to choose one word for the Great Basin? EMPTY

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Trail of Tears - by Robert Lindneux

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Please remember to thank the Native Americans who
"donated" their hemisphere to all of us whose ancestors
weren't born in North or South America.

Newspaper Rock

On our way home, just south of Moab, Utah we made the turn off
of Highway 191 toward Newspaper Rock. It's on the way to the
Needles District of Canyonlands National Park so it's actually a
fairly busy road for being in the middle of nowhere. However,
the 15 mile or so drive is definitely worth it as you are rewarded
with a spectacular panel of petroglyphs, left during a 2000 year
period. Archaic, Basketmaker, Fremont, Pueblo, Ute, Navajo and
Anglo cultures have all left their marks here. We enjoyed our brief
stay here, but we found the "wall" of toilet paper in the restrooms
to be curious!

Lowry Pueblo

Just northeast of Hovenweep is a large area of Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) land called Canyons of the Ancients.
Canyons of the Ancients is a National Monument, but instead
of being managed by the National Park Service, it's operated
by the BLM. It's kind of an odd area because it's interspersed
with juniper forests, sagebrush plains and large swaths of
irrigated farms. After driving through much of this varied
terrain, we came to Lowry Pueblo, which is part of the monument.


The pueblo is covered with a large metal roof to protect it.
It's very similar to the covering at Casa Grande in Arizona.
Constructed almost a thousand years ago, the ruins themselves
were once home to around 100 people.


My favorite spot in the ruins are the multiple rooms and inner
kiva, which are currently located under the roof. It was bright
and sunny today, but with the roofs that would have been
covering the pueblo in historic times, it might have looked
very similar to this view.


A short walk from the main pueblo is the Great Kiva. This would
have been used for ceremonial, religious and community functions.
It's said that the unique figures at the bottom of kiva represent
summer people and winter people.

Exploring Hovenweep

We had a great night of sleep and we are actually getting really
good at breaking down camp. Who knows...by the end of the summer
we might actually be able to wrap it all up in a half hour! We made
our way over to the Visitor's Center where the main trail surrounding
the ruins at Hovenweep begins. Hovenweep was a small community
of farmers and hunters located around a small canyon. From the
trail, one can see most of the dwellings and they are all pretty
spectacular. Add to the fact that hardly anyone was here besides
us, made it even better.


The ruins here are in average condition, but to me, that helps give
one a feeling of how they looked when they were first discovered.


We left the Square Tower group near the Visitor's Center and drove
toward the Holly/Hackberry Group. Even fewer people visit this
remote area and it is located a short drive down a dirt road to the
northeast. We hiked in over some really interesting slick rock
to the Holly Group and there it was with a commanding view of the
canyon.


Indian Paintbrush is one of my favorite flowers and they were here in
abundance as well as many other varieties.






We saw all kinds of lizards along the trail, but this yellow-headed
collared lizard did a wonderful job of posing for us.

Camping at Hovenweep

In 2009, only 37,848 people visited Hovenweep National Monument,
making it the 10th least visited Monument in the National Park
system. If that number increases by two for 2010, Lynn and I
can be thanked because we decided to stop here to camp for the
night on our way home. It's a great little park that has a lot of
different Anasazi (Ancient Puebloan) structures, stradeling the
Utah/Colorado border.


Even though we pulled into the small campground at around
5:30, we found a pretty nice little spot, overlooking a nearby
canyon, and Ute Mountain, far to the east. Unlike the past two
nights at Chaco, there was no wind, and the temperatures were
relatively warm.


Apparently, it takes very little to make us happy and we
discovered that we were going to be the first to use the
fire pit that had recently been installed at our site. It
performed like a champ!


Because the weather was so nice, there weren't any clouds, and
we were able to get a spectacular showing of stars. Probably the
best display we've seen since we last wintered on the Ice a few
years ago. The moon was just a sliver in the sky, certainly helping
our view.

Farmington Public Library

Back in 2006, we almost moved to Farmington, New Mexico
just because of this library. We decided that although a good
library is a contributing factor on where to live, it shouldn't
be the only factor. As a result, we decided that
Grand Junction was a better option. However, we visit the
library in Farmington every time we're in the area and
even if the book selection was lousy (it isn't...Lynn says that it
has the best fiber arts collection she's seen), it would be worth
visiting just for the architecture. It was designed by Hidell &
Associates Architects in 2003 and takes into account the local
Navajo heritage by being built in the shape of a kiva. The building
is round and all sections spoke from the center, like a wheel.
It even has markings on the floor marking the summer and
winter solstices, when light will shine in from the ceiling at
these particular times. It's a fantastic library and the people
of Farmington are lucky to have it.

Leaving Chaco

A visit to Chaco could take many days to see everything, but
we had to leave, knowing we'll come back someday soon. We
stopped by the Visitor's Center before heading out and now
the old center has been replaced with a temporary yurt. Yurts
are pretty neat buildings but because this yurt is still fairly
small compared to the old Visitor's Center, none of the old
displays, detailing the history of the area were located here.


The old Visitor's Center has been condemned and is scheduled
for demolition. Apparently, it was built on soft clay and when
the remodeling crew went in to start, it was discovered that
the building was unstable. Lynn and I pondered that in a
place where buildings a thousand years old are the attraction,
modern man can't build a structure that will last more than
50 years!


Chaco is a Dark Sky site, meaning that there is very little
light pollution present and is a fantastic place to view the
night sky. As a result, the National Park Service has taken
advantage of that and has a wonderful sky watching
program and even has a great observatory in place. To our
surprise, there was a park volunteer named Bob Bohley that
was operating a telescope at the Visitor's Center this
morning. With a special filter on his telescope, he was
able to show us the Sun and several large flares erupting
off of it's surface. I've seen photos of this before, but never
live on a telescope. It was very interesting and Mr. Bohley
did an excellent job educating everyone that viewed this
sight.


Chaco is one of 20 locations in the United States and one of
890 locations in the world that have been listed as UNESCO
World Heritage Sites. This is an important designation as it
is a protection of Mankind's existence and culture. I think
that Chaco definitely is a good representation of this.

A Day of Exploring

Exploring the Great Houses such as Pueblo Bonito and Chetro
Ketl are always interesting and we could take a week exploring
all the different ruins here, but we were most interested in
visiting ruins that we hadn't visited before. This would involve
a bit of hiking, which we definitely up for. The first site we
checked out was Kin Kletso. At one time, it contained about
55 rooms, 4 kivas and 1 tower kiva. It was actually built by
McElmo phase people who came from the north, late in the
period in which Chaco was occupied.


Much like the other sites at Chaco, almost all of the wood had
to be brought in from miles and miles away. Kin Kletso's beams
were no different. Quite a task for a people who didn't know of
the wheel.


I enjoy seeing the different masonry and doorway styles in
each of the pueblos.


Along the trail, there were a number of petroglyphs. Chaco was
also a huge center of astronomy and we found a circular design
that might have been used to measure the seasons. The sun
would shine at different points of the circle on major astronomical
events of the year such as solstices and equinoxes.


Another small site we visited was Casa Chaquita. It's currently
unexcavated and was probably built around 1100. It was also
a good place to stop for lunch!


Because this area is very dry, there isn't a lot of wildlife in the area,
but we did see a fairly large number of lizards.


At the beginning of the day, we had bold ambitions. The boldest of
which was hiking the Pueblo Alto trail. This would mean hiking up
the cliff side (the difficult part) and then hiking across the top of the
cliff side to overlook Pueblo Bonito and visit the Pueblo Alto complex.
Wait...not so fast. When we got there, we looked at the climb...steep,
but not un-doable. It also included a VERY narrow section where one
has to squeeze through between several huge sections of rock.
We started up and found the trail to be very rough. It hardly qualified
as a trail at all. We took a quick vote and decided to save it for a time
in which the trail might be improved. Rest assured Mom...your youngest
child isn't a complete idiot!


As we were headed back to the car, we saw this couple scrambling
up the cliff side and decided we had made the right decision.


With our hiking for the day completed, we had the option of checking
out other pueblos, going back to the campsite to read (me) or knit
(Lynn). Instead, we decided to exit out the south end of the park
toward the Navajo town of Crownpoint. The sign warned that the
road would be rough. Ha! it wasn't lying, As rough as the road is
entering the park from Nageezi in the north, this road was much
more wash-boardy.


However, there were lots of beautiful views available.


I'm pretty sure we were never "quite" on this angle while driving the
road, but it certainly felt like it sometimes.


Along the way, we drove by a Navajo ranch that had a number of
jewelry items for sale "Self Serve". A few little signs near each piece
asked people not to steal them. It's interesting that people would
actually think of doing so.


We came to a sign that left us scratching our heads. Were we headed
to Heaven...or Hell?


I was interested in visiting Crownpoint. For one reason, it is one
of the few areas of the Navajo Nation that we haven't visited and
I also grew up near the town of Crown Point, in Indiana. The town's
name was definitely where the comparison ended however. it's not
a bad little town. Just very remote and much much smaller. We
stopped at Basha's (a southwestern-based grocery chain that has
locations in lots of the larger Navajo Nation towns such as
Kayenta, Ganado, Window Rock, etc.).


The southwest is known for it's dinosaur relics, but we didn't think
we'd see one on this trip! Maybe it's even the remnants of a dragon.
Albeit a happy one!


We did a bit of stargazing before bedtime. One of the reasons we came
during this time period is that we knew there would be a new moon and
this is one of the most remote areas in the Lower 48 to view stars.
There is very little light pollution. Unfortunately, there were also more
clouds that we would have liked and way more wind than we would have
liked. It made for a short sky-watching evening. Fortunately, we had a
nice fire and it made for a cozy evening.