Tom and I saw just about every Ancestral Puebloan site in the southwest during our explorations in October.  I’m sure you can’t tell one site from another based on my pictures.  But it was interesting to see the progression of the society from large, communal villages in fertile valleys to dispersed family dwellings in cliffs …

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The day after hiking in El Malpais National Monument, Tom and I visited El Morro National Monument.  The two monuments are only a few miles apart, but they are extremely different.  Those of us who only speak English would say that the two names look alike but that is just because the start with “el” …

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Just off I-40, west of Albuquerque New Mexico, is El Malpais National Monument.  Although Tom and I had seen the signs for the monument many times, we had never stopped until this trip heading east.  El Malpais is a beautiful and surprising landscape in New Mexico. El Malpais National Monument gets its name from the …

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The last place we visited on this trip to Arizona was Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site.  We went to Hubbell Trading Post directly from Canyon de Chelly, so we were hoping for more than we saw at Canyon de Chelly. John Hubbell established the trading post in 1876 on the Navajo reservation.  Although the …

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After leaving Bluff, Utah, Tom and I headed for New Mexico.  But we still had a couple of National Park Sites to hit in Arizona on our way out of the area.  We stopped at Canyon de Chelly National Monument on a travel day while we were pulling the RV. Canyon de Chelly National Monument …

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During the time we were at Pipe Spring and in southern Utah, we lived and visited sites along the Old Spanish National Historic Trail.  Pipe Spring, Navajo National Monument, Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Frontier Pioneer State Park, Aztec Ruins, Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, all stretch along the 2,700 miles of the …

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Everyone who does the Grand Circle in Utah and Arizona goes to Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches.  Sometimes those tours will include a lesser-visited but still gorgeous national park called Canyonlands.  Canyonlands National Park has three districts:  Island in the Sky, Needles, and the Maze.  Most people who go to Canyonlands visit Island in …

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Aztec Ruins National Monument is another Ancestral Puebloan site.  But it is a little different from the ones Tom and I had previously seen.  The other ruins were dispersed, with some of them in out of the way places, such as cliffs or canyons.  They represent the later Ancestral Puebloan period when the ancient people …

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After visiting Canyon of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, Tom and I continued our exploration of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings.  Our intention was to visit Yucca House National Monument, the next closest collection of dwellings to Canyon of the Ancients.  However, visiting Yucca House is more difficult than you might expect from a National Park …

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After visiting Hovenweep, Tom and I continued on to Colorado where we visited Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.  Because Canyons of the Ancients is a Bureau of Land Management Monument, it is open to various uses.  National Park Monuments are much more restrictive. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument encompasses 170,000 acres bordering Hovenweep …

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