Pueblo del Arroyo
Since we were not able to reserve the site we were at for more than two nights, but we want to stay here another two days, we decided to move to the site right next to us, which is not reservable. The first thing we did this morning was to move our camping chairs over, and then parked the Tahoe in the new site while we ate breakfast. After we’d made our lunch for the day we moved the trailer and set it up again. It’s the shortest distance we’ve ever moved.
After that we drove to Aztec to view the Aztec Ruins National Monument. It has nothing to do with the Aztecs, though early settlers here thought it did, so the town and ruins are misnamed, but is another of the many archaeological sites in this area of the ancestral puebloans. We caught up to a tour guide just shortly after we arrived. There were only two others in the tour, and the guide was very good, so we got a good lesson on the culture of these people.
While eating lunch we decided on a whim to drive the approximately 70 miles to the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. About twenty kilometres of the road is terribly rough washboard. It reminded us of some of the “corrugated” dirt roads we were on in Australia. However our Tahoe has much better suspension than our Australian motorhome did, so the ride was much, much better.
We were astonished at the size and number of the ruins at this park. They are by far the best that we have seen while travelling through this area. There were a lot of very skilled stone masons here in the late 1200’s. Together with the dry climate, their skill has meant that many of the buildings with their two or three story high stone walls are still standing. The weather is changing, and so it made for beautiful pictures with storm clouds moving in against the deep blue southwestern sky and highlighting the ruins.