[Almost three weeks after the fact now… Happy Easter everyone!]

I managed to tear myself away from the splendor of Monument Valley to get to what would be one of my other favorite places before sundown: Hovenweep National Monument. It is another ancestral Pueblo site but I didn’t realize what was so special about it until I got there. These aren’t cliff dwellings but actual towers built up out of nowhere. On top of boulders, on the rim of a canyon, these towers are completely mysterious and powerful.

Scientists can only guess what they were built for. They were’t homes, they don’t seem to be protecting anything specific (although each one is near a water source), some have kivas, underground ceremonial rooms, but some don’t.

My favorite were the “twin towers,” two towers built on top of separate boulders with inches separating them. One is D-shaped and the other round:

I arrived just before sunset and had a serious moment of joy and gratitude with just a beer, a pot of soup warmed on my rocket camp stove, a good book and a breathtaking view. One note: this was by far the best campground I stayed in. Each campsite had great views of the valley and individual artistic picnic areas. And it never fills up. Worth a trip out of your way:

In the morning I walked the main loop again and then set out to try to find one of the even less visited outlying sights: Cutthroat Castle. I should have asked a ranger for directions before going but I was waking with the sunrise at this point and was out before the ranger hours started. Plus I had nowhere to be, of course, and I do love adventures.

I was driving along some dirt road and found a map of the area with (I suspect) out of date forest road numbers. I picked the one that looked closest to the block of protected land that I knew the castle was on, parked and started walking. I had vague directions that a path left the road to the right but that never materialized. I followed this crazy four wheel drive road for about an hour, saw one sign for a mountain bike path, went the other way, and then out of nowhere was a new barbed wire fence, stone pathway and sign that I had just entered National Park land.

There was a sign-in book in a weather proof box that told me I was the first human there in over a week. I LOVE that. (Also, strangely three out of the last 5 people to visit were from Vermont!) This site was smaller but completely fascinating. They call it a castle but it again was not a discernible defensive structure. One of the special things about this site in specific is the number of kivas there; more than one per building. One kiva was built abutting the wall of the big tower and could only be accessed through a crack in the boulder that it sat on.

After finally leaving that amazing place I headed further into Colorado to Mesa Verde National Park. The dwellings here are more like those that I first saw at Navajo National Monument, except that in this area there are a lot more of them. The starkness of the trees on top of the mesa was breathtaking as well.

Also unique to Mesa Verde you can actually go right into one of the settlements!

Next I looped down into New Mexico, but I think since I got carried away sharing Hovenweep photos I’ll wait until my next post and spread out the enjoyment 🙂