Hovenweep National Monument

For those of you that are tired of looking at ancient puebloan pictures, you can skip this blog.

Cause here's where we spent a good part of today! Another Puebloan National Monument.

First stop of the day, however, was at this scenic trailhead called Sand Canyon. It was beautiful landscape with promises of many treasures along the trails. But at 104 degrees we decided not to go hiking.


Instead we continued on to Hovenweep. This park covers over 20 miles of ruins, many of which are in remote areas only accessible by high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicles. We started at the visitor center and were given maps to the Little Ruin Canyon hike.


It was another well paved trail to the overlook of the canyon where we could see several dwellings. First was the Stronghold House perched on the top edge of a steep drop.


Then, peering down into the depths, we could see the Boulder House. It's amazing to think that these structures actually were homes for people.


Even though it was 102 degrees we decided to continue along the path about 1/2 mile further. The entire trail loop is 2 miles which didn't seem doable in the heat. This is Hovenweep Castle. The work that went into building round structures like these is incredible.

There were several more structures that we photographed and marveled over such as the twin towers. By then, the sun had really knocked me for a loop and we hurried back to the air conditioned car.

Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that most of the ruins were only accessible by a high clearance, 4 wheel drive vehicle? Well, Doug took that as a challenge and off we went in search of Painted Hands and Cutthroat Castle.

Part of the way was highway and then we turned onto a dirt road with lots of good sized boulders. Painted Hands was a small, round dwelling with remnants of hands painted nearby. But it was waaaaay down in a canyon and I was not interested in the long hike involved. So we just took a couple photos and moved on.

The road became much more interesting with deeper ruts and a couple of steep hills. It took us probably 30 minutes to traverse the 2 miles.

We finally arrived at Cutthroat Castle and it required another walk. But only .1 mile. I could handle that.

Unsurprisingly (is that a word?) we were the only ones there and had a great time wandering around the ruins. Each time we rounded a corner we were surprised by another building.

The main part of the "castle" was build on a humongous overhanging ledge and we didn't even see the building underneath until we climbed down into the valley. That's me standing at the top, left of the picture. You can see how large this castle is!

What a fun day! By the time we climbed back to the car and drove home it was after 8 pm again. This exploring is beginning to wear me out.