aztec ruins and bandelier national monuments

My dad and I spent the night in Farmington, NM, which is not far from the Four Corners area. We didn't go over to the Four Corners, as we were pretty beat by the time we finished up at Chaco Culture. We checked in at the hotel and then went over to a Mexican restaurant, Si Senor, that had come highly recommended to us. My dad totally hated it, and I thought it was just so-so, clearly targeted at white people (strange, considering that we were in NM). At least the chips and salsa were good, if nothing else. I will say that we didn't ever get great, authentic Mexican food while we were in NM, which was a bummer.

The following morning, we set out late (7:45am) so we could stop by Aztec Ruins National Monument, and then get back on the road. We were only at the place about 45 minutes, as it's pretty small. Of all the Indian ruins places that we visited, this was my least favorite, probably because it was close to a city (right off a busy road, actually) and thus far less impressive to me because there weren't any interesting surroundings.



The Indians (not Aztec, by the way--that's a misnomer) must have been very short.




This location, like Chaco, had the round structures (kiva) that were used for religious ceremonies. Aztec had a rebuilt, redecorated kiva that you could check out, which was pretty interesting.



And here's what most kivas look like now.




Our next destination, Bandelier, was a few hours' drive from Aztec. The drive took us through more desert country, then through some very pretty mountain country, with pine forests and grassy meadows.

Our first glimpse of Bandelier was this overlook.


In case you haven't noticed, I have a thing for dead trees.


Our primary purpose at Bandelier was, like Chaco and Aztec, viewing dwellings built by the Ancestral Pueblo people. Here's the first set we saw.



Bandelier contains a lot of cliff dwellings, as seen in the above photo, but it also has a number of ruins on the ground.










There were also a few petroglyphs etched into the canyon walls.


There were a number of ladders, like this one, that would allow you to climb into the dwellings.


I have severe acrophobia and refused to climb any of them. However, we walked a ways back into the canyon and got to a place that was supposedly pretty cool, Alcove House, but found that you could only get to it by climbing a combination of 140 stairs/ladder steps (mostly ladder). Having walked all that way, I decided to climb up while my dad waited for me. I'm glad I did--it was pretty cool.







It was used primarily for religious ceremonies, hence the kiva that was built half way up the rock face.

Getting down took a while. I've always had trouble with ladders and given the fact that I have bad knees, combining my fear with my pain resulted in my descent taking 2-3 times as long as my ascent had. Still, it was worth it.

This is what greeted me when I got back down.


I'm sorry, but if you're overweight, particularly if you're a woman, you need to be more careful about this kind of thing.

We saw a bit of wildlife on the way back to the car, including some deer, an Albert's squirrel and a whip-tail lizard.





When we were done there, we drove over to a separate part of the park known as Tsankawi, where there were more cliff dwellings. Although these were less organized than the other site had been, I ended up enjoying this part more. There was no one else around, and we ended up spending 3-4 hours wandering around the area.

Here's what the area looked like.


After seeing these steps worn into the rock, it wasn't hard to figure out why the Ancestral Pueblo people chose this spot. The rock is soft, easy to wear away and contains many small caves/impressions.


Various dwellings:


My dad noticed shards of pottery on the ground, and we quickly found that the place was full of them, which was very cool--my first experience finding actual artifacts anywhere.


Here's an arrowhead I found:


Since it's a national monument, you can't keep anything, but that's OK--finding it and photographing it was plenty for me.

I don't know if these channels were worn in for walking paths or for rain, but they were another good example of how soft the rock is.


A dwelling, up close and personal:


Bandelier turned out to be a great place with lots of cool and unexpected things to see. If you're ever in NM, I highly recommend it.