I
had been wanting for years to go to Chaco Culture National Historical
Park for the Summer Solstice. I am a huge fan of Chaco, but had not
done the solstice. I persuaded Sandi that this was a good plan.
She invited her friends Julie and Doug to come along in their
motorhome. I made campground reservations, as well as reservations
for the sunrise event.
On
Thursday we met them in Morrison, and headed south of US285. We had
we went over Crow Hill and Kenosha Pass, and had lunch on the road.
We continued south towards the summit of Poncha Pass, when we heard
a call on the two-way radio that they had a problem. We turned
around and found them off the side of the road. Their engine had
quit, and we could not find an obvious problem. We were unable to
locate the main fusebox on their 1997 Bounder motorhome.
Ultimately, we gave them a ride back to Poncha Springs, where we made
a lot of phone calls. However, no one could work on it until next
week. We left Doug and Julie in Poncha Springs, waiting for the tow
truck, and headed onwards. We crossed the San Luis valley, over
Wolf Creek Pass, and stopped at Riverside campground near Pagosa
Springs. The campground was very nice, along the San Juan River. We
took a brief walk along the rapidly moving river, and ate dinner in
our RV.
Friday
morning, we got up and headed to Chimney Rock National Monument. We
dropped our RV at the bottom of the hill, and signed up for the 9:30
tour. Our tour guide was volunteer, but good, and showed us the area
near the parking lot, and then took us up towards Chimney Rock
itself. Chimney Rock is considered to be a Chaco outlier. We
learned a lot about Chaco culture and architecture. I volunteered to try grinding corn like the indians did. It is not easy.
After
our tour, we headed out to Chaco Park. The weather was hot. We
had lunch in Durango, found the natural grocery, and ate in a very
nice taco restaurant. After a brief stop in Aztec, we headed south
towards Chaco. The road in was pleasant except for the 10 miles of
dirt. Sandi wondered if the vehicle would hold together after being
shook up on washboard. We arrived after 5 PM, filled the camper with
water, and headed for our campsite. Parking the rig was more
troublesome than usual; Chief Ranger White suggested that we try the
other side of our campsite, and he was right. Sandi grilled a steak
and some vegetables. We attended a very interesting star talk,
focused on the myths involved in Chaco and Indian Culture. The
speaker, Steve, had a degree in theology, but was a Jungian
psychologist, and quite interesting. He retired from clinical work
and ended up as a summer ranger in Chaco.
On
Saturday, we took a hike up the canyon. Sandi did not want to climb
up to the mesa, so we opted to head up the canyon to the petroglyphs.
We got back in time to watch the indian youth dancers from Laguna
pueblo. I was a little disappointed, as I had seen really good
dancers at Cheyenne Frontier days, and the huge Pow Wow in
Albuquerque. We had lunch, and then took an afternoon tour from
Steve to Chetro Ketl ruin. I had not seen that before. After the
tour of Cehtro Ketl, we were hot, and elected to go back to our car
rather than see more petroglyphs. We sat in the shade of the camper
awning until evening. We met a very interesting gentleman who was
publishing a book on archeo-astronomy, which is all about the
alignment of buildings and petroglyphs with various astronomical
events, such as the solstice. Sandi cooked a good spaghetti dinner,
and we admired the stars.
Part
of what we did on this trip was to give away the reservations that we
did not need. The campground was completely full, and the sunrise
event was completely booked. I told the campground host when we
arrived that our friend's RV had broken down, and that they could
give their site to another party. We heard later that the party who
got the site was very grateful. We met a young couple taking a
year off and touring the USA, and we took them in our truck to the
sunrise event. We decided to leave on Sunday, rather the the planned
Monday departure, due to the heat. Since we decided to leave
early, we notified the campground host of that as well.
On
Sunday morning, we lined up at 5 AM to go to the sunrise event. It
felt early. There is a window on the great kiva at Casa Rinconada
ruin which traces a rectangle of light on the wall of the kiva,
lining up perfectly with one of niches on the solstice. We all
stood around and watched the wall, and each other. The rectangle of
light shone briefly on the wall, until it was obscured by clouds on
the horizon. So the event that we all lined up to see did not
happen that morning.
After
sunrise, we went back to the campsite to pack up and leave. We
headed back to Colorado, and ended up camping in a forest service
campground on the east side of legendary Wolf Creek Pass. We wanted
to camp at a higher elevation, where it would be cool. The campsite
had recently been logged to remove dead trees, killed by pine beetle,
so it looked rather bombed out. On the other hand, no one else was
there, so we got our pick of sites. Sandi wanted a campfire, and the
logging slash provided an endless supply of wood for the fire. So
the campground had both good and bad points. I was happy to be able
to show Sandi a forest service campsite, which kind of completed a
circuit of types of campsites, since we had stayed in a nice
commercial campground the first night, a national park campground,
and a forest service campground the last night.
We
drove home on Monday.
Sandi
loved camping with four walls and running water. I love Chaco, and
plan to return, but probably not in the summertime. The temperature
was above average for June, and really inhibited walking around.
