We spent a few days in Santa Fe and really enjoyed the city. The weather on the first day was miserable, but it was also the first day of March Madness (Thursday), so we found a sports bar and managed to enjoy ourselves though many hours of basketball and chatting with folks at the bar. Before leaving town on Saturday we checked out the extensive art gallery scene and the downtown plaza. Both were nice, though it was still pretty windy and chilly for walking around.
On Friday we checked out Bandelier National Monument, our third trip in four days on our new National Parks Annual Pass. This also fully realized our $80 investment ($35 for Grand Canyon, $20 for Petrified Forest, and $25 for Bandelier). Everything for the next year just maximizes the investment. We’ll be using the pass a lot as we road trip through the US of A.
Speaking of our road trip, here’s the basic plan: Santa Fe, Taos, Silver City (Gila National Forest), Phoenix, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Tucson, El Paso, Marfa (Big Bend National Park), Austin, Houston, New Orleans (first weekend of Jazz Fest), Birmingham, Memphis, Midway (Drew’s uncle’s place; potentially go to the Kentucky Derby), Chicago. That gets us to the beginning of May. We’ll then head back to Chicago, likely taking a northern route through the Dakotas (the only two states I haven’t visited). We’ll probably go to Badlands National Park and Glacier National Park and Boise.
OK, back to Bandelier National Monument. The site preserves the homes and territories of Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest. The structures at the site are dated between 1150 and 1600 AD.
We did two hikes. On the first, we followed Frijoles Creek up the aptly named Frijoles Canyon.
The first set of ruins shows the foundations of houses built away from the cliff walls. This was actually the third phase of construction. The first phase was making homes out of alcoves in the cliff walls and the second phase was extending homes from the alcoves.
You can see the many natural alcoves in the cliff walls.
We climbed a ladder into one of the alcoves. This one was quite small.
Here’s some of the second phase: dwellings built out from the alcoves.
We came to the Alcove House, a large alcove and dwelling located 43m above the canyon floor. We took four ladders to climb up to the house.
The Alcove House coming into view.
Leena reaches the Alcove House.
Here are a couple of looks back up at the Alcove House.
For our second hike, we took the Falls Trail which follows Frijoles Creek downstream deeper into the canyon and ends at Upper Frijoles Falls.
You can see a bit of Frijoles Creek in the bottom left foreground, and the muddy brown river in the distance is the Rio Grande.
The waterfall is about 80 feet high.
We stopped at a viewpoint of the Frijoles Canyon as we left Bandelier.
