The title of this post is adapted from my favorite National Parks T-shirt. The pun is obvious; this is the world’s mecca of red rock landscapes. The circuit of the entire set of red rock parks in this region is known as the Grand Circle.
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Condo City of Mesa Verde
Via the southwest corner of Colorado I was driving from New Mexico to Utah. “Mesa Verde National Park” the sign read as I drove by. Everyone I’d spoken to about Puebloan society had mentioned this place as one of two pinnacles of their civilization, Chaco being the other. “Hundreds of cliff dwellings” I had been told. “Oh to heck with my schedule,” I thought and started the long drive into the park.
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Mission accomplished. I’ve travelled throughout much of New Mexico and have developed an understanding of and appreciation for the region. Initially I thought I’d be focused on the geography because of the character of Santa Fe and Taos. It wasn’t long before the pre-Spanish indigenous cultures caught my eye, primarily because of how the State’s character today is influenced by the Puebloans. Surprisingly, the third theme that came through as significant was space technology from rockets to spaceships to UFOs!
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Where Did the Puebloans Go?
The first ruins I visited were inhabited from 900 to 1300 after which the populations “disappeared”. Today I visited ruins which were deserted in the period from 1500 to 1700 but whose populations just relocated. They had depleted the resources needed to live and needed to move to a new situation. Their decedents in these cases still live in the area hundreds of years later.
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Before we get to Smokey and Billy, browse a few shots from Carlsbad Caverns. Click to advance pictures. Yesterday I visited Smokey’s grave and today I spent time at Billy the Kid’s.
But wait, Billy’s grave is the end of the story which spans from 1864 to 1881.
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The world capital of UFOs is Roswell where strange occurrences have been reported since the 1940s. It’s home of the International UFO Museum, UFO City, the annual UFO Festival, and the upcoming Alien Theme Park. Up and down Main Street are space-themed businesses: UFO & Alien Stuff, Alien Zone & Area 51, Not of this World Cafe, Alien Spacecraft, Landing Screen Printing, etc. The place is nuts for alien invasion. I asked the clerk at a gift shop what locals think of it all and she said “We don’t like being the UFO center of the universe but we do love what it does for business!”
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In 1950 the town of Hot Springs won a contest to rename itself after the popular game show Truth or Consequences. Crazy stunt, yes, but the town seems predisposed to such oddities. Sixty years later they won the right to host the Spaceport Visitors Center and today I went looking for it.
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Road closures killed my original agenda for today. No matter, New Mexico has plenty to hold my attention. Today became Rock Day. At two National Monuments I saw first-hand evidence in the form of graffiti of people long dead and learned their stories. I thought it might be boring … wrong! I capped the day with a drive to the top of a 10,700 foot rock called Sandia Crest. From there I could see forever.
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If living with great vistas causes your heart to swell then I envy the Hopi and Navajo who live atop mesas. These elevated plateaus provide a perch hundreds of feet above the canyons and valleys. As I drove across their nations, I climbed and crossed three distinct mesas and could see forever into the distance. The people who live on these raised setting enjoy stunning views. However, from what I saw, their living conditions are poor. Here are examples of what I saw:
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Driving through the Four Corners district includes meandering among the red rock regions that Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado share in common. Striking landscapes! The pictures here were taken at Shiprock, Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley, Agathla Peak, Mexican Hat and others sites.
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