Mesa Verde N.P.

For the second time in my life I visited Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. The first time was about 11 years ago, when I came together with Bob to the 4 corners area. Mesa Verde N.P. is a lot like Bandelier, it only has much more prehistoric sites and more impressive cliff dwellings. Although the rangers tell us every time, that the cliff dwellings are only of minor importance in the history of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made Mesa Verde their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300, the cliff dwellings speak the most to our imagination since they are so well preserved.

James and I took a few self guided and two ranger guided tours throughout the park. I visited areas that I hadn't visited the first time I was here. What struck us both was, how devastating the wild fires had been in the last years. Nearly all the trees in the park were burnt. The dead remains of them can be seen over hundreds of acres all over the park.

Last night we reached Kayenta in the middle of the Navajo Nation in Arizona. We had a quick and disappointing stop at the four corners monument. (We had to pay $ 3,00 each to see the place where UT, CO, NM and AZ meet and there was a Navajo market with T-shirts and pottery around it. It was so NOT worth paying the entrence fee!!!) We spend a wonderful night in the luxerious Hampton Inn (after we checked out the other two hotels in town: Best Western and Holiday Inn where we were treated rather unfriendly) and are on our way to Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly N.P. now.

Bandelier NP and Los Alamos

Right now we are in Durango, Colorado, ready to see the Mesa Verde National Park.

The two days before we visited Bandelier National Park and the town that never was: Los Alamos.

At Bandelier we visited the evidence of the Ancestral Pueblo people that can be found in the whole South West. There is no written history about those people. All we know now is by the evidence they left in their dwellings, artifacts, and petroglyphs. It is believed that the ancient culture is continuing in the culture of the modern pueblos in the South West. Bandelier hosts a few cliff dwellings and Tyuonyi Pueblo. That "big house" had 400 rooms but only 100 people lived there. Many of the rooms were used mostly for storage of food and pens for turkeys.

James was not so fond of all the ladders we had to climb up and later down at the Alcove House. He later said the he had to face dead when he was climbing the ladders. I thought that it was not so bad. The altitude was more that got me there. At more then 2200 m one can be short of breath very easy.

We camped at the campground in Bandelier after we had done a bit of scienic byway over the wooded mountains on NM-4. The next day we visited Los Alamos. During the second world war the town did not even exist, because the team of Robert Oppenheimer developed the first atomic bomb there. Even today the Los Alomos Laboratoreis still exist and most of the land around Los Alamos is off limits for the public. Of course we visited the science museum there where we learned everything about the bomb.

On our way to Durango, Colorado I got sick. I think it was a combination of food poisoning from the burger we in Los Alamos and the altitude. Anyway James took all responsibility and checked us in into a very nice Super 8. Thank you my wonderful man, for what you did to me!

After a good rest I feel ready now to face more adventures.

Santa Fe Trail

From Las Vegas (NM) we went North West to Montezuma. There a former hotel of the Santa Fe Railroad has been transformed into an international college (Armand Hammer Foundation). Most parts of the school are closed for public, but the Dawn Light Sanctuary, a building designed as a place of contemplation and reflection was open. It's a new round building with 12 large prisms built in the windows. The prisms break the sun light shining through the windows and project rainbow colors at the white walls of the room.

The reason why the Santa Fe Railroad Company built the hotel there at that particular spot at the Gallinas River were the hot springs. Of course James and I soaked our feet in the hot water for some time.

On I-25 we continued our way South to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. We first visited the state capitol. The building is different from all the other state capitols I have seen till now. We were actually able to see even the inside of the building with access to the Senate and the House of Representatives. The capitol houses a wonderful art collection from local artists. Santa Fe itself is a very art friendly city. Many museums and galleries can be found here.

We visited the Santa Fe Museum of New Mexican History, that had just opened the day before and therefor the admission was free. The museum was packed, but the exhibits were quite interesting. (So we learned everything how New Mexico became the 47th state of the union in 1912 just a few weeks before Arizona joined the union. For those curious to know which states followed: Alaska (49th) and Hawaii (50th))

Santa Fe gave name to the Santa Fe trail, one of the trails that the early settlers followed on their way west. (Oregon trail is an other well known trail.)

Santa Fe kind of blends in with the surrounding (spectacular) landscape: only low rise buildings mostly from adobe or at least built in the classic (Mexican) adobe style. The mountain tops around Santa Fe still are covered in snow while down here the temperature is a cozy 26ºC.

A night in Las Vegas

After visiting the UFO Research Center in Roswell we left the city not knowing what to think about the so called Roswell Incident. Fact is that in the night of July 4th in 1947 something had crashed in the desert near Corona, NM. Corona is by the way more then 100 km (to the NW) away from Roswell. Fact also seems to be that the army tried to cover something up. Personally I do have my doubts if that was an UFO crash in the desert. The eye-witness reports differ too much from each other for my taste. ...but you never know... My advise: always keep an eye in the sky!

We drove North through the deserts of New Mexico and saw only 7 cars in the last 65 km before we reached Fort Sumner where we payed a visit to the grave of Billy the Kid and the sheriff who shot him. On US 84 we headed further North to Santa Rosa and Las Vegas. Around Santa Rosa the scenery changed: evergreen trees (junipers and pine trees), rocks and hills appeared in the prairie.

We finally arrived in the charming little town of Las Vegas. Since the grass is green in other places as well, the Spanish settlers called other places then the famous one in Nevada “Las Vegas” (the meadows) as well. Not much gambling and shows are going on here. So we organized our own show, stayed the night in our nice Super 8 motel room and watched the last episode of Desperate Housewives. What a strange show was that...

Rosswell

James and I are back in the US. After visiting his parents for a few days in Fort Worth (later more about them), we hit the road yesterday morning and drove to Roswell, New Mexico.

Although James and I both believed that the circumstances were ideal for an other UFO experience (we observed animals behaving differently, ideal weather, nice landing strips and the fact that Atlantis was returning back to earth this very day) we didn't see any last night.You can imagine how disappointed we are right now... (James has a very valid addition to this paragraph: "Everybody knows that we could have been abducted last night, but the erased our memories when they brought us back. That's what they do."

Talking serious, we both found out that the so called Roswell incident is commercialized extensively here in this town. Everything is about UFOs and then of course there is the one and only Roswell International UFO Research Center. We'll see what we can do this morning to find out more about the aliens.