We did escape the parade of people looking at each others engines (i.e. Jeep Safari) but did not escape the storm. We were planning on camping near Bluff on the San Juan but when we got to Bluff it was a sand storm of biblical proportions so we drove on to Farmington,N.M. and got a room (and ate pretty good Thai food, who knew there was Thai in Farmington?). We woke up to a white out the next morning and headed to Aztec Ruins in Aztec N.M, hoping that the storm would let up and let us get to Chaco Canyon the next day.
I was glad we made it to Aztec as it is the largest of the Chaco Greathouse outliers and was an impressive site. The Great Kiva at Aztec was rebuilt in the 1920s to what they thought was its original style. It is a pretty amazing place.
The next day it was still snowing but we decided to still head to Chaco. We drove south out of Farmington and turned onto a dirt road at Nageezi, N.M. Part of the Chaco experience is driving out to the site and wondering why the Ancestral Puebloans ever decided to construct their largest communities in what seems to be the most inhospitable part of the entire Colorado Plateau (which is already an pretty inhospitable place.)
If you have any interest in the prehistoric cultures of the Southwest Chaco is Mecca, you have to go at least once to get a sense of the scale of the place and how it influenced so much of the region. The most elaborate burials excavated in the Southwest were found here, along with an immense amount of pottery, jewelery, macaws, copper bells and even chocolate.
Part of the Murdock Clan deep inside Pueblo Bonito, this area was probably 4 stories high, 800 years ago. It is considered the largest prehistoric structure in North America.
Mesa top view of the Kin Kletso Great House
Cold day in downtown Chaco
Pueblo Bonito
Hallways in the Aztec Great House
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