Some Progress

 Byron thinks it had been a while since he posted.  It has been many months since I did.  I keep thinking I will wait until we get a little more done.  However, I guess I should show some of our accomplishments.

Bob has been wanting to build the lift for the truck canopy.  He talked about doing it before we went to get our things from storage, but decided to wait.  He finished it about a week ago and now the truck is in the garage.

The first shows where he pulls on the rope to lift it.  The second is as it goes across the ceiling to the lift area, and then the actual lift.

 This is what it looks like with the vehicles in the garage.

 

 This is the work saver for next summer; or at least to make it easier.

This is just a size comparison of how little the car is compared to the truck.  It is amazing how roomy it is inside.

 Just two pics of inside the front door and looking into the dinning room.

 More pictures to come as things progress.

Spring Travels West Part 4

As I started to work on a new post, I realized that I never posted this one after writing it, so here goes with it.  Warning, it is long.

After going through the cliff dwellings, we went on north to stay at Moab, Utah so that we could go to Arches National Park.

What an area.  B made the comment that even if there weren't any arches here, it would be worth seeing because of all the formations.

Before we got to Moab, we saw this along the road.  It is called Church Rock.

As we got closer, we also saw this, Wilson Arch.

 

We got parked and headed for the park.  I should have taken some pictures of the way up into the park, but didn't.  It was up a cliff.  These are some of the ones we first saw after reaching the top.

This one makes one wonder if it moved in an earth quake, and if so, I don't want to be near if there is another shake.

Just looking through and across to more of the park.

Looking out at more rocks with arches and the view beyond, Cove of Caves.  It was in the mid seventies where we were.

Double Arches

Two old people at Balance Rock.

I loved some of the old trees in this area.  There were lots of twists and wrinkles to it.  You could tell that it's life had not been easy; sort of like our wrinkles.

The above does point to an arch.

We drove on to two areas where you could see Delicate Arch in the distance.  I was able to zoom in on it.  It is all that is left of a rock wall.

In this area, we observed a layer of rough rocks.  Looking closer at them, one noticed that they were not sandstone like everything else.  It reminded us of agates or chert.  There were different colors in the rock.  Wish I knew my rocks better.  It was a park so I didn't take any samples. 

Looking out across the area, we could see soil that was green colored.  Makes one wonder if there is copper in the soil.

You can see some spring flowers in the above picture.  There were others in this area too.  I thought that maybe this one is related to the Primrose.

I'm not sure what the other purple one is but the red is definitely a cactus.

 We drove on into the park, enjoying the view.

 

Then we came to a sign that explained this area and the valley that we were looking over.

This explains that the area had been a salt bed.  The water entered, eroding and washing away some of the salt, the surface dropped and sank, forming the valley in the following picture.  These cracks in the sandstone, formed by the rain, freezing, and wind is what formed the "walls" that are now being eroded into arches.

This really shows the slabs or walls. 

This next area doesn't look much different than several other areas, but there is a sign that says there is an arch back in there, so we went to find out.

This is what we found after filling our shoes with sand getting there.

 

This is the view as we came out.

Another arch.  This one looks like it could break in the middle.

It was about this time that B got a bright idea.  If we hurried, we could drive back to the RV park in town, get something to eat, a flash light, and get back out to Wolfe Ranch; the area where a fellow tried to make a living long ago.  There is a spring there and an old log building.  "We could hike out to Delicate Arch, a mile and a half up hill, and be at the arch at sunset."  It was a good thing the hardware was out of my leg, or there is no way that I could have done it.

By the time we got to the area to start hiking in, the sun was going down behind the west hills.  But we hurried in and were there before it got dark.

They say that seeing sunrise here is also great, but we didn't bring anything to spend the night.  We didn't stay long, as it was hard to find the cairns marking the path across a large rock face.  However, we made it down to the well marked trail and back before having to use our flash light; I do have good night vision.  

So the next morning, before leaving the area, we went back and did some more hiking in to a few more areas which are seen below.

Pine Tree Arch

Sand Dune Arch

Then we arrived at the area that is shown in pictures of this Park, Skyline Arch.  The first shows it on the left and another on the right.  People hiked up under the one on the left.  You can no longer hike under the Skyline arch.  Back in the late 90's some people were under it when small rocks started coming down.  They took off and were not injured when a large area collapsed.  The rubble can be seen on the left in another picture.

On the way out we got to see another part of the park.  

As we listen to the Christmas Story, we hear of the men from the east.  It doesn't say that they went back east, but it is assumed that they did.  I'm not so sure.

It also looks like that could be one of the camels on the far side towards the rear.

Spring Travels West Part 3

Okay, here goes the second part of Mesa Verde.

It was interesting to see the change of their structures as time went on and they learned more.

AD 700 - 950

Pit House (This one has two parts, they think the back part was for storage or was added living space.)

 Pueblo  (This was in the same area as the above picture.  The walls were made from a single layer of stone standing on edge.  Most of these early ones are in buildings to protect them from the elements.)

This is a Kiva at the same site.  Notice that it doesn't have the rocks forming the walls that have been smoothed like bricks.  It does have the small sipapu, fire pit, air shaft, as well as some holes in the floor that were just used for storage.

AD 900 - 1000

This area had been lived in at two different time periods. See the overlapping stone work.  This was not a Kiva, but rather a tower.  From this time on, there were towers.  They don't know if they were for communication or for lookouts.

 This shows a tower, on the right, built over the top of an older Kiva.  There is also another older Kiva on the right side of the tower, that is also partially under the tower.

This is a Kiva from this time period and shows the structure well and the floor.

I added this so that you could just read about the alignment of the Kivas.

AD 1200s

This is what they think this site looked looked like, from the excavation that they have done.

Where some of the rooms were located.

 

This is the Kiva that is connected to the tower.  The upper square hole on the right connects the two.  You can just see a small part of the tower on the right upper corner of the picture.

AD 1200 - 1300
We had gone around on the loop road and were now looking back towards the Palace dwelling.  By this time my camera battery was getting low so I wasn't able to get a very good picture, but these are pictures of some of the other dwellings.  There were a couple just to the left of the Cliff Palace.  We had no idea that they were there when we went down to go through the one.

This is a two ledge dwelling.  Just to the right and above the square in the center lower dwelling are foot/handholds cut into the rocks.  They must have used a ladder to get to them.  The following picture is zoomed in on this area.

They must have been very agile people.  I wonder how many little kids went over the edge.

This is the above one, on the right, and another next to it.  The next picture is zoomed in showing the painted wall.  They think that this was more of a ceremony area.  (They had a fire in this area some years back and that is why all the trees on the mesa top are dead.)

This is a zoom in on the floor below the hand/footholds.  To me, it looked like it had also been painted.

AD 1250
These are pictures of the Sun Temple, which was never finished or lived in.  There were no doors, windows, or fire pits.  This was also started about the time that they left the area.  It was on the top of the mesa.

Not far from the above area, was another structure that they call Far View Community.  It was a Kiva and living quarters in a bend around the Kiva.

Not far from the above is the reservoir that I mentioned in the previous blog.

One does wonder why they chose to live up on this very high mesa area, especially that down from here was flatter ground and there were rivers that could have been used for irrigation.  They also would have had a longer growing season and it would have been much warmer during the winter.  Yes, they probably did get more rain up there.  However, one does wonder.