October 29-31, 2022 Farmington, New Mexico

 60 and sunny today. It is getting down into the 20's at night. BRRR.

There was a craft show today at the fairgrounds where we are camped. The kids in town also came and trick or treated at it. So many cute costumes. Outside was a haunted school bus! I saw no other adults going in, so I didn't check it out. Plus there was a long line of children. Shotgun shell xmas wreaths at the craft show today. 

I bought raffle tickets at the craft show. The prizes where donated by the vendors. I won two. A set of plastic pearl necklace and a pair of glass dichroic earrings and a lovely hand crocheted table doily. Probably can use the pearls in a basket, may just add the earring to the ones I sell. The doily is lovely but not my thing. Not sure what I will do with it. But fun to win. There was also some horse events at the arean at the fairgrounds. We stopped by and watched some barrel racing. I think there may have been roping events in the morning. 

No trespassing, we are tired of burying the bodies at the horse arena and this sign is in front of a business along the highway. Not sure if they have holy trucks or it is a truck church. Cool clouds this afternoon. 

 Beautiful historic downtown Aztec, New Mexico. I didn't want to cook tonight so we went to the 550 brewery in Aztec and had brews and pizza. John with his Mile High IPA .He had wanted the Kick in the Dick double IPA, but they were out.

 Sunset in Aztec from the brewery.  Sunset last night at the fairgrounds.

We went to Angel Peak Scenic area today. We found no way to get down into this valley. They said there were trails, but we did not find any. Mostly it was oil land with lots of oil pumps. Pretty place though.  Castle rock.

Angel Peak Scenic area. Angel peak in the distance. 

Angel Peak. We stopped at the visitors center and museum to see if they had maps of some of the sites in there brochure, but no luck. The historic  hat exhibit at the museum and a couple of the more unusual  ones. 

October 27-28, 2022 Farmington, New Mexico

 High today of 49 , partly cloudy, very windy and some SNOW! The low tonight is predicted to be 23. 

Crossing the San Juan River as we leave Bluff. Roadside hoo doos seen through a dirty window. 

We passed through Arizona and the Navajo Nation to arrive in Farmington, New Mexico. Shiprock in the distance with SNOW through a dirty window. The snow did not stick to the ground, just blew around a little bit when we went through the city of Shiprock. 

The bus parked at the McGee Park, San Juan county fair grounds. We have a nice view of the San Juan river on one side and a RV parking lot on the other side, with a pond and fall cottonwoods. We are the only people here. It is very quiet, and we are far away from the street lights as we could get. We toured the Salmon Ruins today. It was a 250-300 room great house, 3 stories high in places. It was the largest of the outlier colonies of Chaco Canyon. Here is a map of the floor plan as it was in 1116 AD.

Some pots and a basket in the museum. The land was homesteaded by George Salmon. The ruins are named after him. He had an apple orchard, so the Salmon orchard. A cat visited us at the ruins.

John viewing some of the rooms on the first floor in the back. The roofs were built with first timbers across, then smaller pieces crosswise, some kind of bush over that and then adobe. You can see it in this window. The original walls were 3 feet thick, a veneer of smooth flat stones on each side, with smaller flat stones between and filled with rocks and rubble, a view looking down on a wall on the bottom. After the Chacoan people left, Mesa Verde people moved in. Their walls were more random stones with just adobe mortar in between. Next to the window shows the two different styles. And a larger view of the original Chacoan walls.  

Many of the square original rooms were rebuilt by the Mesa Verde people into round kivas. You can see the square corners with the round ones built inside with different masonry. 

This room has an alter at the end. The room has been partially filled in to preserve it, so the alter looks like a slab. On the solstice the light shines in exactly on the stone on the alter. This is the first floor is the huge 3 story tower kiva. 

The large grand kiva with the courtyard behind it. This kiva besides being a square room converted to a round kiva with different masonry styles also has some repair work on the bottom done at a later time with round river stones. 

An example of a trading post in the 'heritage area of the museum'. The insides of a Hogan and a pit house in the heritage area.

Sun in the cottonwoods in the outdoor exhibit area. After the ruin we visited Lauter Haus Brewing company. John with his IPA and my Cowboy Coffee- coffee stout in the background. The walls have pinball machines decorated for Halloween. 

Sunset with a setting sliver moon from our campsite. 

October 25-26, 2022 Bluff, Utah

 58 and sunny today.

We hiked to Split Level Ruins through a beautiful canyon. First view of the ruins through the trees.

This was a huge petroglyph, maybe 10 feet long. A partial wall in the lower ruin. 

Yellow evening primrose and petroglyphs. There were tons of petroglyphs, but they are so eroded that they are hard to see. The white ones I tried to enhance in Photoshop to make them more visible. Part of the upper ruins. 

Lots of metates for grinding corn. Possibly the kiva was here.

Nice ruins. Handprints in the back of one of the rooms. 

John with ruins. Some petroglyphs with metates and pictographs. 

I was climbing around trying to figure out how to get to the upper ruins and found out how they did it, these moki steps carved into the rock. I am not brave enough to try them. The upper and lower ruins of Split Level ruin. 

Beautiful canyon walls on the way back. 

Sunset. The next day was 63 degrees and sunny. We decided to check out the three small ruins in Hobb's Canyon.  Cute little paintbrush. 

It appears that to see the ruins you have get into this canyon that is about 200 feet below. We decided to try it another time and went back to the car.

Mr. Hobbs was one of the scouts exploring for a feasible for the  250  Mormon (Hole in the Rock) pioneers to follow from their encampments above the Colorado River Gorge, 100 mile s west of here.  They ended up building a crazy rugged road for 100 miles to get here. He carved his name into the rock here.