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We have been back from our long trip for one week, and I would say we are acclimating to life in a rainy climate instead of the terrible drought in California. We were lucky to miss the dangerous brush fires now raging in California and a very late snowstorm in the Rockies just a few days after we drove through.

Here in Ann Arbor, we are back to a life without a nearby beach, without a vista of mountains, but with many good things including our own home and garden.

On the drive east, our car was packed very full. Two bicycles, several suitcases...
this was the trunk as it appeared on the last day of the trip.

From the Denver area to Michigan, the road is long and not very interesting.
Wind farms, corn fields, feedlots, construction sites, semi trucks,
and a few splatted bugs on the windshield -- that's it. Glad to stop. 

Our magnolia bloomed to welcome us home. Almost all the blooms have now fallen. 

Migratory birds are everywhere, fun to watch. Chicks are hatching.
I think this is a goose egg. Baby Canada geese are not really welcome in the parks,
as the geese are so numerous, dirty, and aggressive.

But these Sandhill crane chicks are very welcome!
Len has seen and photographed quite a few birds since our return. More to  come this weekend.
See Len's Flickr page for constant additions of bird photos.

An 80-year-old century plant is sending up its stalk at the Botanical Garden.
Once it produces a crop of "pups," that is little clones, and a flower,
the plant will die as all agaves always do. At 15 inches per day of
growth, it will soon reach the roof, as shown in the photo.
They will open a panel so it can grow up and up.

Lots of other things to do: last night was a meeting of my book club, written up here: "The Worst Kitchen in Literature."

Ladders

Inside a reconstructed kiva at Spruce Tree House,
Mesa Verde National Park

Climbing ladders, long ladders, is the only way to visit the 13th century cliff-side constructions at Mesa Verde. Kivas -- the semi-underground structures built by the mesa-top dwellers from the 6th to 12th centuries -- used ladders to enter the dwellings through a hole in the ceiling; modern Pueblo people, descendants of the Mesa Verde residents, have similar access to their traditional homes.

The trail towards Balcony House

For many visitors, the long ladders are incredibly scary. But the ancient Pueblo people used hand and foot holds on the cliff face to enter and exit from the cliff dwellings. These are like a ladder, but much more challenging. It's hard to imagine all people, young and old, on a climbing wall virtually every day.

A visit to Balcony House begins with a climb up a huge ladder.

Coming up the ladder to exit from Balcony House.
Yes, that's the canyon floor down there.

In addition to climbing ladders, at Balcony House you
have to climb through an 18 inch wide tunnel at the back of the alcove.

Stone stairs exiting from Cliff Palace lead up to another ladder;
at top center, you can see the foot- and hand-holds for the original exit.

Top of Cliff Palace exit ladder

Taos Pueblo (visited 2004). You can see the similarity to the cliff structures
at Mesa Verde, and see some of the ladders. Scholars now think
the Taos Pueblo residents are descended from the people who lived in Mesa Verde.

Roof-access ladder at Taos Pueblo (2004).
Note: many present-day Taos residents also have a modern house
in addition to the original Pueblo house.

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde

We started our day-long car tour of Mesa Verde by circling the Mesa Top Loop. I've written about the 6th-12th century pithouses on top of the mesa that we visited there. In addition, we stopped at several viewpoints to enjoy the scenery, especially the beautiful canyons and occasional glimpses of distant snow-capped mountains. In the afternoon, we toured the three ancient cliff dwellings that were open to the public this week: Cliff Palace, Balcony House, and Spruce Tree House. There's another scenic loop in the park, but it hasn't yet opened for the summer season.

Several overlooks at the Mesa Top Loop enable one to look across the canyons to the cliff dwellings that the Pueblo people built during the thirteenth century. We particularly enjoyed the view towards the Cliff Palace, one of the largest structures built into the natural alcoves in the canyon walls. Many of the smaller ones are visible on the same cliff face.

Looking towards Cliff Palace we enjoyed watching the swallows swoop and dive below us and on our eye level, speeding down into the canyon as they gobbled up the insects. They move much too fast to get a picture in flight (at least that's true of our telephoto lens); we did catch one sitting in a tree just below the viewpoint:

A violet-green swallow seen from the overlook towards Cliff Palace

Cliff Palace

Our tour of Cliff Palace began at 1:00 -- we ate a picnic lunch while awaiting the tour, which leaves from the second driving loop. Visiting these structures that hang on the edge of the cliff with spectacular entrances and exists is an intense experience, especially walking down the fairly steep paths towards the alcoves where the Pueblo people built and climbing up quite long wooden ladders. In some cases we also crawled or climbed through narrow passageways. The Pueblo people had handholds and footholds in the rock face, and essentially they climbed right up the sheer face of the cliffs every day to go to their fields, to hunt and gather plants, and whatever else they did -- in other words, the park service has made it easier for the tourists!
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Cliff Palace as we were entering the alcove

Looking around

Like the older dwellings on the mesa, the cliff-top structures all include kivas, or round shelters that were once covered by a sturdy roof and entered by a ladder in the middle of the room. Similar arrangements are still used by the descendants of these people, such as the residents of Taos Pueblo.

Cliff Palace has a seep-spring that provided water to the people in the structure, and had rooms that were probably used for storing grain and other foods. As the biggest structure, Cliff Palace may have been used not only as a dwelling, but also for meetings and dancing. Details of life in the many cliff dwellings are subject to speculation, as much of the archaeological materials were looted soon after the ranchers and other explorers became aware of the many incredible cliff ruins.

Kiva at Cliff Palace

To leave Cliff House, you climb through a narrow
slit in the rock face... 

After the stone stairs through the slit, you climb a rather long ladder
to exit. Above: Len coming up the ladder.

Cliff structures, we were told, were built only during the last century when the Pueblos lived in Mesa Verde. Throughout that time, the inhabitants made the entrances more and more narrow and challenging, probably in order to repel invaders or strangers. At the end of that era, when there was a very long drought, they abandoned the area entirely and moved south, where their descendants still inhabit somewhat similar pueblo dwellings. The existence of the structures at Mesa Verde seems to have been entirely forgotten some time after the abandonment of the area around 1300.

I'll be posting more photos of the other cliff structures that we visited, including more about the kivas, about the people who lived in these structures, and about their rediscovery.

Pithouses at Mesa Verde

Originally published on my food blog here, this is the first post of a few that I plan to do about our recent visit to Mesa Verde National Park:

Grindstone from 6th or 7th century, Mesa Verde pithouse

Pithouse at Mesa Top Loop, Mesa Verde National Park

Now that we're back home from our long trip west, I have time to think about the beauty of the ruins we saw in Mesa Verde. I can wonder and learn more about the history of these ancient people who lived in this difficult country from around the 6th to the 13th century and then moved on. Above all, I can remember my experiences of visiting their early pithouses on the tops of the mesas and their amazing cliff dwellings in the alcoves under the cliffs. I tried to learn what the early people ate, as well as many other things about their lives and their material culture.

On the morning of the day we spent in Mesa Verde, we followed the Mesa Top Loop, stopping at every opportunity to see the dramatic overlooks down into the canyons and to see the archaeological sites of very early pithouses, the dwellings of the first Pueblo people to arrive in the area.

Wild turkey at Mesa Verde

Around the dwellings, we learned, were the fields where the Indians raised corn, beans, and squash. They gathered foods such as calorie-rich pine-nuts from the pinyon pine, and hunted game. They domesticated the local turkeys, and also raised dogs. (I assume that like the peoples of Central America, they ate dog meat).

Archaeologists have discovered numerous channels that the ancient people used to control the many streams of water around their fields; the exact purpose of these water projects is not fully understood.

In their below-ground buildings, which originally had wood-timbered roofs, people slept, ate, stored their grain supplies and other foods in baskets and skin bags, ground grain on grindstones, cooked over a central fire pit, and generally led their lives. Clay drinking vessels, seed pots, and other pottery have been found in the digs. Some interior spaces appear to have been used as meeting places as well as for living.

The many excavations we saw are protected by metal buildings and railings to keep out rain, wind, snow, and tourists. We read many explanatory placards like the one illustrated above, and found the documentation very helpful in learning the history of the people who lived in these pithouses until the late 12th century. At that time, for reasons that are not well-understood, they began to build new dwellings -- cliff houses -- in shallow caves, or alcoves, in the sides of the cliffs. The amazing alcove dwellings, many visible from the Mesa Top Loop overlooks, are of course the most famous aspect of the park.

Mesa Verde pottery from the ancient peoples -- in park museum.

I'll be writing more blog posts about the cliff dwellings and how they were discovered in the late 19th century.

Cliff dwelling from Mesa Top Loop viewpoint.

Monument Valley

We drove from Flagstaff towards Mesa Verde National Park via the scenic route: Monument Valley, partly in Utah, partly in Arizona. This is some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, comparable to the other national parks in Utah & Arizona that we've seen -- Bryce, Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon, Canyonlands. It's very dry and the atmosphere is quite dusty, but nevertheless magnificent.

Thinking of Tony Hillerman's wonderful detective stories all the way across the Navaho Nation's lands, when we got to the visitor center I couldn't resist saying I was looking for Jim Chee (meaning Hillerman's policeman, only symbolically). The information desk staff woman said with a puzzled look, "He's in a meeting." My mistake -- that's a normal Navaho name, and Hillerman's work is NOT the first thing on anyone else's mind. She had vaguely heard of Hillerman, actually.

Viewpoint on the way to Far View Lodge, Mesa Verde

The lodge in Mesa Verde is a vast improvement over last night's tacky motel -- instead of freight trains we have a stunning view across the valley, with lots of birds in the trees and low bushes outside.

Driving Home: Santa Barbara to Flagstaff

7:20 AM -- Early morning light. Our last look at the beautiful orchid garden
belonging to Delores, owner of our apartment.

Loading the car -- the garage belongs to Delores.
Our apartment was around the back and downstairs.

We got such an early start that we drove across LA instead of taking back roads to avoid the traffic, as we had planned. Our hunch about traffic paid off: we sailed through, and then on into the Mojave Desert, where our car thermometer measured a high of 102 degrees. We enjoyed the variety of desert scenery including mountains, some very dry landscapes, and areas with slightly greener desert plants.

4:00: Flagstaff, temperature down into the 70s.

Across the street (a little too close) -- freight trains go by rather often

Condors in Grand Canyon National Park

Our main activity during our one full day at Grand Canyon National Park last Friday was enjoying the views of the canyon, using the shuttle bus to get to the rim trail for a series of hikes. Then in the late afternoon, we listened to the park ranger's scheduled presentation about the California condor. A small number of condors have successfully been introduced into the park – they were once native here, but became extinct in Arizona in the 1920s. The park presents a very large, protected, and appropriate habitat for these huge birds.

Park Ranger demonstrating the use of a condor puppet from
the captive breeding program. Seeing the puppet rather than a person
prevents the condor chicks from imprinting on humans and
becoming unable to adapt later to life in the wild.

The canyon’s 70 condors, which fly as far as Zion National Park and beyond, are descendants of the 22 condors that survived in California in the 1980s. These were taken into protective custody and encouraged to breed in several zoo programs. Currently, we learned from our ranger, a total of 420 condors survive. Besides those re-introduced into the wild in Arizona and California, a majority remain in zoos and sanctuaries. 

The ranger talk included several suggestions about helping maintain and improve the survival of the condor. Lead poisoning from bullets in the carcasses or discarded entrails of hunted deer and other animals presents a continuing danger to carrion-eating species. Encouraging hunters to use copper bullets instead of lead is one of the principal ways to protect the released birds and help them once again become truly wild.

Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t warm enough during our stay for the Grand Canyon condors to come out of their caves and show themselves to us tourists. Len and I saw one of the Grand Canyon introduced condors a couple of years ago at the North Rim. And many years ago we saw two of the last truly wild members of this still-endangered species.

Early morning on one of the rim trails

Deer and Elk

Most of the big animals we saw were right by the road.
These mule deer didn't mind grazing beside a big intersection
with lots of tour buses that say "Grand Canyon."

These two deer's ears spread wide because they heard me sneeze as I was
about to take the photo. Why not sneeze?

Just before we left Grand Canyon we took a long and beautiful walk along the rim trail.
An elk walked right onto the trail -- he didn't know the rule about staying 50 feet from people.

Elk near a parking lot in the early evening -- we saw them as we were walking away from where we had dinner.

Albuquerque to Grand Canyon: Spring Back to Winter

April 3, 2014 -- post delayed due to no wireless internet or time for it while at the Grand Canyon for 2 nights! But now, here it is, as I wrote it down Thursday night.

West of Albuquerque as we drove onward this morning, the mountains were unimaginably beautiful. We came over a pass and I saw spectacular deep red cliffs, deep blue-green trees, and areas of vivid white snow, all illuminated by the rising sun. For a moment, I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing. Then: breathless.

On the highest pass we saw police and tow trucks working to clear a number of vehicles that had obviously slipped off the road earlier in the morning. Luckily, the pavement was quite safe by the time we drove by.

Just past the New Mexico-Arizona border we stopped at a landscaped rest area where all the flowering trees had pink blossoms drooping under deep snow. Bushes and yucca plants were outlined in snow. We definitely regressed from spring back to winter today.

Along the road in the mountains we saw four or five extremely long container trains with containers stacked two high on most of the cars. We also saw a couple of conventional freight trains. Sometimes you can’t see to the end of the train, they are so long.

The tracks parallel highway 40 – old route 66, as one is reminded repeatedly by tourist attractions memorializing the old highway. I don’t miss it at all: four lanes are much better than two!

Thanks to another time change, we arrived at the Grand Canyon by 2 PM and spent the afternoon looking into the canyon and birdwatching in the Kaibab National Forest (without much luck). The area near the visitor center is amazingly crowded despite being off season, though turnoffs along the road east were quite open. Quite a bit of the park is off-limits to private cars – you have to take a shuttle bus. 

We’re staying in the Yavapai Lodge, which consists of a number of single-story buildings like an old motel. The room is quite nice and we’re glad to be right in the park. 

On April 4, we spent the entire day in the park, and now we have made it to Ontario, California. I'll be adding more posts about each of these days and what we have seen, eaten, and done. We've definitely seen winter and spring alternating: our highest temperature on the trip was 80 degrees registered on the car thermometer and 22 degrees reported overnight at Grand Canyon.