03-19 - Happiness is having a telephone that works and through which I can access the Internet. I have warm fuzzies tonight at long last. It certainly took long enough for this podunk firm to get their act together. They were more than willing to bill me for a phone that was not connected to anything, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they attempt to bill me for the repair they had to make to their own equipment. I think it took 10 phone calls before this ordeal with this idiotic phone company. I had thought that Bell Atlantic or Verizon could be very bad but I was wrong, these clowns are worse.

Without getting on my soap box too much, perhaps we must reconsider this deregulation of the utilities; look what has happened in California with their power companies when "bottom line" means much more than customer service. I am tired of sending batteries to friends in California. Of course now that profit has been made, the state is looking for Federal assistance.

I went to Holbrook this evening to buy food, the local law type ranger took me down to Safeway and got a few things that I needed before I take off on a photography trip during the week. I haven't decided where but I think it will be Canyon de Chelly and Mesa Verde, both of which I have been told are very impressive.

03-20 - I went in at 0700 mostly to do laundry, really didn't finish until 1800. I did get the laundry done but I still have to iron the shirts. A housewife's work is never done.

I spent the majority of the day outdoors on a scouting expedition of the park. I saw a good part of the southern part of the park but there is still much to be seen and learned. We went to Newspaper Rock where I did take some pictures but it was too early in the day and many of the petroglyphs were in the shade and not easy to photograph. From there I photographed the pronghorn herd who seemed very interested at looking at me and not too concerned about moving away. They are attractive animals and very curious.

We went to Blue Mesa where the petrified woods is being exposed by erosion and segments of the logs are sticking out of the clay. The layers of bentonite clay and conglomerate are very evident in rows of red, purple and gray. Harder substances such as thick sandstone or petrified wood are found at the top of these mesa's and the umbrella affect of this less permeable material is quite evident. Of course as the wood is exposed and the support is eroded away, it falls into the gullies between the mounds and slowly washed down to the badlands's floor where it collects in pockets.

I know little about petrified wood but I have an idea that when I am finished here I will know a lot more. That is probably true about a number of other subjects as well. I will be happy when I can go out on the Internet freely and pursue some these more pressing questions. I feel foolish when I cannot respond as fast as I think I should be able to. The green suiters are more than willing to help.

The conglomerate layers contain small pebbles that had been washed down from the mountains in the south millions of years ago and by looking carefully one can find very small fossils so I am told. We didn't spend that much time. On a day off I will grab my trusty steed "Bike" and wander down the road for some exploring. I can use one of the park's pickup trucks to get close and then peddle the rest of the way. There are few places were I can park a vehicle where it will not obstruct traffic.

One of these days I will pull roaming duty and I will be able to cruise and walk most of the park that I haven't seen yet and of course photograph. One day I would go out the point overlooking the badlands, set up the camera on a tripod and take identical pictures 30 minutes apart. Hopefully I will be able to capture how the the badlands change colors as the sun moves.

Some of the interesting points are well off the road and will required some hiking. Places like Martha's Breast, Lots' Wife and Solomon's Throne do not photograph well from a distance even with telephoto lens. Up closer I can take a look at what angle to shoot from. Probably even more important I can then see what is the best time to photograph and have the best lighting.

We eventually drove to the Painted Desert Museum and I had the opportunity to browse the exhibits of mostly Paleontology fossils found in the park. Petrified Forest has its own dinosaur, "Gertie", found in the Wilderness area in the north end. While not much is know about it, it a very early specimen. I believe it predates the Triassic Period by a few million years give or take, before I was born for sure. I doubt if my grandchild feels that way of course, to him I am a dinosauer

The shortage of people both from illness, training and leave changes plans continually the rest of the afternoon was spent doing things around the headquarters building. There is always paperwork to be done. Whether it was all the walking around or the sun I do not know but I was exhausted when I returned to Tiny. I took a practice nap that was really serious and didn't wake up until after 2000. I was still able to conk out two hours later and get a good nights sleep.

The air out here and the freshness is doing wonders for me. I usually sleep all night long which is most uncommon, I haven't slept this well in a long time. This change compares favorably with the change from Seoul Korea to Germany back in 1986. this time I am more accustomed to sleeping where there is silence instead of the chaos of a city.

03-21 - Between team meetings and local happens most of the day was spent either in the visitors center or in the office preparing a presentation to be given in the near future. I even found time to iron my shirts and slacks. Now all I have to do is vacuum the floor of Tiny and then wash the outside. I will take off three days and visit the Four Corners area, return to work Sunday and then go to Flagstaff and see three parks in that area. I have never opened the place before, it should be interesting. I spent most of today working on a presentation about the Painted Desert Inn that I will be giving this next week. More fun.

03-22 - Four Corners. It has been a very interesting as well as a scenic day. I was up early, drove into the park a ways and waited for the sun to come up. Took some sunrise pictures of the sun bursting over the rim of the Badlands over the Painted Desert. The abruptness of the sunrise is almost like being hammered.

Of course the park rangers had to check who was the nut that was out so early but as soon as they saw me they just shook their heads. It confirmed the suspicions they had about me.

I went back to the visitor's center and watched how to open the place as I will be doing this Sunday morning. The it was back on the road (I40) headed east to where I hit highway 191 and then north to the Hubble Trading Center National Historic Site where President Teddy Roosevelt visited a few times. Is still a trading post for the local Navajo Indians even though it is owned by the National Park Service. Then it was further north to the Canyon de Chelly National Park and a trip by 2 ½ ton truck up the river into the two major canyons in the park the petroglyphs and pictographs of the Navajos and of the Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloans or whatever is currently politically correct. It is interesting that the Navajos did not show up in Arizona until the 15th Century.

There is controversy between many of the Navajo and Hopi (The Pueblos) Indians just what the titles should be and whether or not they should be called Native Americans or indigenous people. Seems like I have heard similar arguments about other peoples as well. Mythology has it that the Hopi and the Navajo both emerged from a hole in the ground after being birthed by The Earth Mother, however the Navajo guide today followed a more common anthropologists feelings that the Ancestral Puebloans migrated from Asia over the Bering Land Bridge,went as far south as the Aztec areas or further and then returned north. I know that Mimi could visit the area and be identified as being Indian without difficulty .I am going to search the web to see if I can find current anthropological theories proving or disproving this theory. In any case it can only be an opinion and whatever is espoused there will be those who scoff at the idea. I know the timing is wrong by 500 years. I have alrewady read two books that disagree seriously on the issues, both were written by American professors.

The sandstone walls of the canyons are generally five hundred foot of sheer rock wall that is magnificent. The Anasazi built their homes on ledges or in clefts on these walls that precluded attack from above and made attacks from below very difficult for both animals and man. In many cases the houses were available only by using ladders that could easily be pulled up if danger threatened. At Navajo Castle, where the Navajos took refuge on top of a twenty acre mesa reached by two eighty foot ladders, and stood off the the US Army. It was sufficiently stocked with water and food that could not be starved out and only surrendered after the US Army had run out of rations and withdrew from the area. In spite the Army burned all the corps, destroyed all food stocks and killed the cattle. The treaty was signed not long after that and the Navajos were forced to march to Fort Sumpter in New Mexico which indirectly caused the death of thousands of Indians. It should come as no surprise that it was General Crook who commanded the troops. He was the master mind og genocide.

Each little cluster of ruins had at least one partially underground circular room that was used as a kiva at their homes, there is usually a octagon shaped building in the immediate area that is used for similar purposes and is called a hogan.

03-23 - Hovenweep, Utah

A great day, great places to see and wonderful people to meet. I spent the night in front of the entrance to Four Corners "Mall", which is a local artisans flea market tourist area. People were lined up at 0600 for the place to open and the stalls were busily being filled with Navajo jewelry for sale. I guess that jewelry is quite the cottage industry in the area. Most of it is quite attractive if one is into that sort of thing. I spent an hour there without purchasing anything and headed for Mesa Verde in Colorado. In five minutes I was in New Mexico and five minutes after that I was in Colorado.

This area is truly high desert with much of the land gentle rolling hills cut by deep arroyos. There seems to be more rain as the vegetation is heavier most of the time.. There were buttes in sight in all directions, with mountains visible as well. I was driving generally into the sun so the pictures were mostly shadows but still spectacular. I am continually overwhelmed by the landscape. There is just much to look at, Mother Nature has outdone herself all throughout the entire area. There is just so much to look at that it is difficult to decide just what to look at. When one thinks of just how far this scenery extends northwards it is almost unbelievable. This high desert extends north above the Canadian border, a thousand miles or so. I hope that over the next few years I will be able to see most of it. I also hope I will have Mimi along with me on these trips, not only do I miss her company, I dislike my cooking. It just isn't fun cooking for me alone. It tends to get very boring and simply the easiest to get ready and only dirty one dish to reduce the washing. At least tyhe washing is easier now the heater is fixed.

It took about an hour to reach Cortez and head due east to Mesa Verde. I passed through the Ute Indian Reservation and its casino but wasn't even tempted to stop.

The entrance of Mesa Verde is dominated by Point Lookout which is unforgettable. Snow was still on the top of the mesa and some of the attractions were not available unless you walked in. Tiny struggled just a little bit climbing up to 9000 feet but made it, the generator would not start in this thin air so I had to buy a cup of coffee to jump start the ol' pump. If I drop down below 8000 feet the generator will start and will continue to run when I get back to 9000 feet. I guess the carburation is just not set up for this altitude. I know if I flood the engine, it takes quite a time to get her started again.

There were a series of fires on the mesa last year and the damage is readily seen. It was an intensely hot fire as there had not been any fire there is several years and the underbrush and debris was quite thick. Where there had been fires previously, 1996, the debris was quite thin and acted as a fire break. I guess that biologists are changing their thinking on fire and now view it as nature's way of controlling the forest without destroying it. The forest will return eventually but in places where man interfered with nature it will take longer.

The table of the mesa is cut into smaller piece by the many canyon created by erosion over many millions of years. These canyons all share one characteristic, they are 600 or so feet deep and the walls are sheer with under cut ledges occurring quite frequently. These ledges were natural places to build as they could be defended easily and provided some cover from the elements. Earlier habitations were pit

houses on the top of the mesa were the houses were excavated into the earth a couple of feet and some form of wooden cover built over them. Storage area were built as tunnels in the wall of the excavation and lined with rock to protect against rodents and other little beasties. Fire was a frequent danger and most of the pit houses found were destroyed by fire, scientists giving a great opportunities for carbon dating. It must have been difficult living in these hovels in the winter as the interior was probably cold and drafty despite of the fire. Since the smoke was supposed to exit through the roof the inside must have been very smoky.

It is doubtful that people lived much beyond the mid-thirties under these circumstances, teeth were usually ground to the bone because of the stone particles in the corn. From what I have read there were very few people who lived into the fifties. Unsanitary conditions also took their toll.

Eventually it appears most people moved to the cliff dwellings however but some place during the 1200's hundred, the people left and apparently moved south and mixed with other Puebloans. The population of the mesa dropped from as many as 7000 to zero in a relatively short period of time.

There are ruins of cliff dwellings just about everywhere, in just about every canyon and most frequently on the north side of the canyon as to receive the greatest benefit from the sun during the winters. The cliff dwellings on the south side of the canyons might have been built so people could move there during the summer to avoid the heat. Considering the effort it took to build these houses this took significant resources. Frequently store house were built a distance from the living area for fear of contamination, or more likely, beasts of prey would go there rather than to the living quarters. It also kept the rodents away.

It was surprising to me that there were few petroglyphs and pictograms to be seen. There are some but they didn't seem to be located with the housing areas such as was the case at Canyon de Chelly. There are areas I have been told were there are vast collections to be seen, the trail was blocked off however.

It was becoming late and I didn't want to drive in the mountains after dark so I went back to Cortes, did some shopping and saw on the map a National park I hadn't heard of before. Without further adieu off I went on a secondary road through open range, getting delayed by cattle chewing their cuds while stretched out while on the nice warm asphalt and being somewhat reluctant to move, and sheep and lambs having great times playing tag on the asphalt where their footing wasn't that secure and thus taking interesting pratt falls. While it wasn't the fastest trip I have ever made, it was fun. Most of the action was to fast to photograph.

There are longhorn cattle in the area, the span of the horns that I saw were only four feet but one didn't argue with their right to stand in the middle of the road either. I may be dumb, I ain't foolish. I did see a pickup truck that had hit two Herdford cattle on the highway at probably sixty miles an hour. I would consider the situation as a draw, the truck was totaled. So much of this area is open range without any fences. Of course there were cattle on the city streets blocking traffic all too frequently. Dogs seem to take more than their share of hits, there were quite a few that apparently were hit on the highway. I suspect dogs are not pet but rather tools to be used. In many ways I suspect living in the Navajo Nation is still a century behind. It is not unusual to see small villages that are gathered in the middle of nowhere, the number of wrecked cars, trailers and other debris is amazing. There can't possibly be any codes they have to comply with. There are several Navajo girls who work here who state they do not have running water, no telephone and no touch with the outside world unless they work

Hovenweep is unique as far as I know. It is a canyon caused by erosion in the high desert that one could easily miss as it is not on the top of a mesa,just the result of a stream sometime back just before I was born. The "cliff" dwelling, however, are not built into undercut ledges in the sides of the canyon but rather sit on the bluffs. There are indications they are as much fortifications, perhaps protecting the water sources, as much as they are habitations. I attempted to line up some of the buildings to take shots of the sunset but to no avail. It will be quiet here this evening, no one else is in the camp ground, I turned on the generator only to make coffee for the morning so it should be only the stars and I making noise - and maybe an animal or two. It appears there are several locations other than near the park headquarters. Despite the isolation it probably would be a fun place to be a volunteer. It is a small staff and share just about all responsibilities. It is about forty miles from civilization in Colorado but that can be gotten used to I am sure. I suspect there is more sharing of transpotration than here.

03-24 - Petrified Forest - We made it back in one piece, it was a five hour drive so now I have a better idea for planning trips in that area. There are three more parks on the same road that I would like to visit, Natural Bridges, Arches and Canyonland, they will have to wait for a four day weekend.

I hiked the entire canyon at Hovenweep with a German chap from Northern Germany toward Dusseldorf, a smaller town called Wuppertal. The town is famous for its one hundred year old railway system. Between his English and my German we had a great time. He has been visiting the United States for many years and probably knows more about the West than I do. He certainly has visited more parks than I have. I promised that I would send him a copy of the trip report. He isn't a computer geek at all and I doubt if he uses the Internet. I still had a great time walking around the rim of the canyon.

What was most appealing to me at Hovenweep was the towers that look very much the alarm towers I have seen on the Old Silk Road Western China. More ammunition to study I guess. I hope I never lose this urge to know things, it will keep me jumping for many years.

There was a group of students complete with their professor from a Utah State College that was studying the ruins from an astronomy aspect. I didn't want to barge in but overheard part of the discussion. It appears there were many instances were the buildings were constructed to account for the equinox and the solstices which in itself is quite interesting. I couldn't find any reading material at the park so I will go out on-line to see what I can stir up. I know there is a petroglyph at the park that is geared to the solstice and I think I have read that in the Chaco Culture buildings were designed with this in mind.

The drive back was uneventful although the scenery was exceptional. I came a slightly different route until I arrived an Chinle and then it was directly back. I arrived at 1600 and helped close the visitor's center before doing e-mail and the like. I have to open tomorrow morning and I wanted to verify the instructions I had received.