Saturday, Sunday, and Monday

Brad and I opted out of any activities on Saturday to let our bodies rest... His knee, my knee where I whacked it Saturday (on a totally easy climbing part, when I wasn't paying attention), my Achilles' tendon that I pulled at some time... Nothing terribly serious, but a day of no activities was needed.  Bruce and Roberta checked out some arches that Brad and I haven't been to yet and gave us the scoop on them, and we all went to search out some more arches Sunday.

While we were sitting around doing almost nothing Saturday, I did prepare a couple of pork roasts that Roberta had in the freezer, getting them ready for Brad to smoke in the afternoon.

Looking good!

We fix up a pretty good meal together.

Sunday we all drive out to Caballo and Crow Canyons to search for more arches.

Weird beetle we spotted on the way to Zig Zag Arch.

Zig Zag Arch

Bruce and Brad

They're making sure the arch stays up

View from the top

The truck is waaaaaayy over there!

And Roberta is way down there.

We never located the other two arches we set off to find, but we did see some pretty scenery.

And we saw this random arch on the way back.

And a cute balancing hoodoo.

We finished up the evening with dinner out, and a mean game of Wizard.

We had to say good bye to the Dwelles this morning, as they are headed back to Colorado.  We'll cross paths with them again later this fall.

Brad has done some research on the Internet on some of the arches we haven't been able to find, and has found some other cool things to look for too.  We took another day of rest today to let the bumps and bruises heal a little more, but we'll probably be back at it tomorrow.  Searching for these arches, whether we find them or not, is lots of fun.  We are usually driving for miles and miles on powdery sand roads without seeing anyone else.

I had planned on cooking some burgers on the grill tonight, but as we took a short walk this evening, we saw rain showers moving in again, as it seems to do each evening lately, so I had to resort to the frying pan.  Still yummy!

Arch Rock, Cox Canyon (Anasazi) Arch, and Salmon Ruins.

This morning we went to find a couple more arches.  We first took Bruce and Roberta to Arch Rock, one that Brad and I had visited before, but it's easy to locate and walk to, and being the "largest arch opening near Aztec" we thought they should see it.

Then we set off to find the Cox Canyon (Anasazi) Arch, billed as the most spectacular arch in the area. It didn't disappoint.  The hike to see it is described as "moderate" but I don't want to try a difficult one if this is only moderate.  There was some pretty intense rock wall scaling going on, and the trail was difficult to follow sometimes.  We had to use new-found information from some other things we've been to see to find the arch.  Learning about the hand and footholds carved into the stone at Mesa Verde helped, and hearing that other hikers will leave stacked rocks along the way to help you find the path was helpful too.

So we've got to get up on top of that cliff somehow.

There's the arch, waaaaaaaayyy over there... Now to just get to it.

There's one of the stacked rock formations, leading the way.

And we made it!

The view from the top.

Found a lounge chair!

One last look around.

Squeezing in a little opening in the arch.

Now to head back down. Bye-bye arch.

Good thing we had the stacked rocks to find our way back.

We climbed up what???

What goes up, must come down.

Yep, that's the top half of the climb.

One last section.

Enjoying a picnic lunch in the shade.

We decided we'd had enough rock climbing for the day, so we drove down to Bloomfield NM, to see Salmon Ruins, so named for the man who homesteaded at the property in the 1890's.  No excavation took place until the 1970's.  These ruins are a little different from the Aztec Ruins, as there is noticeable evidence of the ruins being initially built by Chacoans, and then altered and lived in by other native cultures.

Looking back up the hill at the museum and visitors' center.

We first looked at George Salmon's homestead.  He used many of the building techniques that native cultures had hundreds of years ago.  The sides of many of the buildings have vertical logs, filled in with clay.

Root cellar

Bunk house

This was cool!  These are irrigation pipes, made from wood.

Then we came up to the ruins

This is where you can see the two different cultures represented.  The original room was square.  The later occupants, such as Mesa Verde people, rounded off the inside of the room to make a kiva.  This was shown several times throughout the ruins.  I guess they were the first to prove that you CAN put a round peg (room) in a square hole.

Look at the teeny tiny pieces of stone that fill in the area between larger stones!

All of the holes you see along the wall are where logs would have been to form the lower ceiling and upper floor.  Most of the rooms we can see are partially filled in with dirt from hundreds of years of rain and wind.

One of the larger kivas.

The largest kiva in the central courtyard.  The walls would have been much higher, and the floor much lower.