Hovenweep National Monument

We began our journey on the “Trail of the Ancients” (no - that is not what we call ourselves yet!) with a stop at Hovenweep National Monument in the far southeastern part of Utah.  Along the drive there we came to this rather spectacular arch just off the highway so had to stop for a picture of Wilson Arch.

We parked the trailer in a small little campground with no electricity and the temperature was back to freezing at night so back to sleeping with the hooded sweatshirt on! At least we were not staying in a tent like the folks we met from England who are touring America for 5 months on motorbikes!  We are keeping up with our reputation of bringing bad weather with us as it has rained every day we have been down in this desert so far!  Everyone here so far has asked us to stay because they have been having drought and need the water!

Hovenweep is a site of similar time frame and architecture to Mesa Verde but the masonry buildings are on top of the ground more than in the cliff walls.  This was the way the Ancestral Puebloans (the current politically correct name for the people who used to be called Anasazi) built them all over this area for a thousand years or so before they started building them in the cliffs for more protection. 

We hiked out and saw the ones situated around the head of this small draw where there had been a spring.   It was a fairly easy hike along the rocks and sand until you had to hike all the way down to the bottom and back up out of the canyon after you had walked about a mile and a half along the rim.  But I am happy to say Steve’s funny looking hiking companion made it just fine!



 

This one was called Hovenweep Castle.  It is quite amazing to see the intricately cut stones and the masonry when you consider these were built sometime between 200 AD to 1230 AD.

This one is kind of interesting because the one on the right is built under the over hang of a large boulder.

Of course Steve also found this cool picture of the Claret Cup Cactus out among the boulders.

I saw a coyote chasing a mouse under a bush but he was on the other side of the ravine and so well camouflaged you could only see him when he moved so we have no picture worthy of sharing of him.  It was just neat to see him in the wild.  A large raven was harassing the coyote but he would have none of that and chased him off the ledge until the raven had to fly away. 

It rained most of the night on the roof of the trailer and was still raining hard the next morning when we headed on toward Mesa Verde.  We stopped at the Anasazi Cultural Center (they must not have got the memo on the name change) near Delores, Colorado because it was too wet to do anything outside.  It was very interesting with a video with modern day Hopi and Zuni and other Pueblo Indians stating why they revere these ancient sites and how they believe because of their oral history and traditions they are the descendants of the Indians who built these dwellings in these areas. 

The reason most of the folks call the people who lived in this area Ancestral Puebloans is because they have been determined to be the ancestors of the various modern Pueblo tribes.  The name Anasazi was a name given the ancients by the Navajo and they have a different language than the Puebloans so are not thought to actually be descendants of the Indians who lived here.  Interestingly the Navajo language is most closely related to the Eskimo and Athabascan languages than any of the southwest Indian languages.  Well enough (or maybe too much) history for one blog.  I just find it all so interesting.