Anasazi Quest Van Camping

Original Trip Description: (August 11-17, 1996)
Explore by van the prehistoric civilization of the Ancient Ones. Evenings will be spent under the brilliant starlit nights of southwestern desert country. This tour through the Four Corners area will range from 4000' to 9000' plus elevations thus moderating the Southwest's summer heat. Expect fantastic sunrises and sunsets as desert monsoons create lofty cumulus cloud displays for our daily enjoyment.
We will camp out of our duffle bags; create fresh, western style meals from our complete kitchen; and dayhike 5-10 miles through new attractions each day. Everyone will be able to choose their own activity level. Major attractions that we will visit are Monument Valley, Edge of the Cedars Museum, Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and Walnut Canyon. Trip is rated leisurely to moderate (L/M).
Originates @ Flagstaff, AZ.

Hand & Toe Route

Chaco Canyon Ruins

Trip Report:

This was a shorter version of a 10 day trip that we last organized in '90. Several of the group flew into Phoenix and drove to Flagstaff with us the evening prior to the trip. While hunting for a campsite in the national forest, we spotted an elusive gray fox. After locating a plausible camp, we buzzed into Flag for Margaritas and a Mexican dinner at El Chilito. The next morning we met the rest of the group at the airport. In addition to the rental van, Mike and Denise drove their diesel truck, the "walla-walla rig". With two seats out of the van this left lots of room to carry all of the group's food, supplies, and personal gear. Mike and Denise's new rig was filled to the roof with goodies including an elaborate folding kitchen counter with sink and a new folding kitchen table with seats. They also surprised us with a gift of a new red folding table.

Our first stop was Wupatki where we toured most of the major sites and the museum for a couple of hours. With lots of miles to cover, we pressed on around noon to visit the relatively new Monument Valley Tribal Park. At times it was hard to make the miles because of stops at the ubiquitous Navajo jewelry stands. We still managed to arrive with time to take the 20 mile drive through the monuments and check out their visitor center. We camped at Sand Island near Bluff that night and were treated to the best night of this year's Perseid meteor shower. Mike is an amateur astronomer and he pointed out the various constellations. When conversation got intense about the possible existence of other intelligent life and spatial physical constraints on visitation, most drifted off to their tents to sleep after a busy day.

The next morning after perusing the Sand Island petroglyphs, we toured Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding. This excellent museum is still growing and a special treat was their unusual warehouse style display of Anasazi pots. It was sad to see that the accompanying catalog noted the providences were missing for most of the items. No one really knows where they came from anymore. That afternoon we continued on to Hovenweep. We hiked the 2 mile loop near the ranger station and spent some time touring the outliers. The campground was closed due to lack of visitation so we pressed on to Mesa Verde to spend two evenings there.

Mesa Verde was delightful. It was cool at the 8000' elevation of the Morefield Campground, there were deer and turkey in the campsites, there were lots of campsites to choose from, and there were hot showers. A new ticket system to visit Cliff Palace, Balcony House, or Long House has been instituted. Unfortunately, one person from each group gets to spend a bit of time in an early morning line while the rest explore the visitor center. However, the tickets insure you will no longer have to line up for hours at each of these popular sites. To further complicate things you can't legitimately tour Cliff Palace and Balcony House on the same day. We chose to visit Balcony House and Long House, viewing Cliff Palace from the rims. We were all impressed and amazed by the effort that went into creating these sites.

No charcoal fires were allowed at our campsites due to extreme fire danger in the Southwest. Some of our meals had been selected for barbecuing which left us with a bit of a dilemma. Len & UnSun scaled this cooking hurtle by poaching the Mahi Mahi perfectly in the Dutch oven. When we left Mesa Verde we passed through Durango and continued on to Aztec where the largest reconstructed kiva in America can be seen. Chaco Canyon was hot and dry as usual. We hiked up to Pueblo Alto above Pueblo Bonito. Denise found an ochre pot and painted her face. We saw the Jackson Staircase and decided we were just as happy that the NPS has declared it off limits.

When we stopped for lunch at the tribal center beside Window Rock, the afternoon monsoons blew up a light rain shower. We asked for directions at a Window Rock gas station and were assured by both the attendant and a supposed department of highways employee that we didn't want to take Route 7 to Canyon de Chelly. Supposedly it was in terrible shape. Having gone this way before, we were suspicious of this assessment and drove over the Chuskas to Spider Rock as usual on the good logging road. The next day we hiked down into Canyon de Chelly with an excellent Navajo guide to see Antelope House and the Ute Raid pictograph panel. We had been warned we would not wish to go down the route we planned to come out and it was everything the guide claimed it would be. A hand and toe route which caused one participant to state, "I didn't sign on for this." However, everyone made it out safely.

Seven of us had toured Yellowstone together several years ago. This led to a momentary resurgence of vole jokes ( i.e. what do you call a helpful vole: a volunteer, name a famous Italian song: volare) which then led to some ruin joke attempts but after some rumination (close counts) most of us gave it up. On the way back to Flagstaff we checked out the famous Hubbell Trading Post and briefly stopped at the Painted Desert. We left Flagstaff around 4:00 PM after breaking up the group and saying good-byes. Susan and I had a real challenge to face with less than 24 hours to pack our gear and leave for our third "honeymoon" Grand Canyon raft trip.