1981 Road Trip to New Mexico

My Monday posts are trips back in my own history…. brought into the present via pictures that I have been scanning. This week I’m remembering a road trip to New Mexico in September of 1989. We spent considerable time at Bandelier National Monument. We walked around the main ruin area,

Did some hiking,

Climbed into some reconstructed ruins,

Saw the carvings of mountain lions, and

Tried to image how it must have been when the canyon was populated in ancient times.

My husband was taking flower pictures then too…and managed some stunning ones at Bandelier.

I remember the hike down to the Rio Grande vividly. There is an elevation change between the visitor center and the river.

We followed the water for part of the hike and my husband too pictures of a waterfall from many angles.

And finally made it to the river….very muddy and much reduced by up river irrigation.

We drove over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and my husband took a dizzying picture from when we walked out onto the bridge. I remember feeling the bridge vibrate when cars or trucks went by…and not wanting to stay out on the walkway for very long.

We also went to Pecos National Historical Park on that road trip…but it was overshadowed by Bandelier.

Thinking back on this and other times I’ve vacationed in New Mexico – I have enjoyed them all…and am ready to go again.

Bandelier National Monument in 1980

The first time I visited Bandelier National Monument was in the spring of 1971; I didn’t take any pictures on that trip but remembered the place and wanted to return. An opportunity to visit again didn’t come until August of 1980; I recently scanned the images my husband took and remembered that visit. We had driven from our home in Plano TX. It was quite a road trip through New Mexico – camping along the way.

There is a large D shaped ruin on the canyon floor and eroded rocks everywhere.

There are ruins along the side of the canon that used eroded spaces for storage. Some of plastering and black markings from fires remains from the long ago uses of the place.

Post holes into the rock show that the ruins once had multiple floors along the canyon wall.

Here is a close up of a row of holes for a floor/ceiling support and some pecked images in the rock.

Some of the designs made in plaster had been protected from the elements.

Some areas were left as they were but the black at the top of the cavities show that they once had fires. Perhaps there are ruins under the rubble at the base of the cliff.

These rooms are probably restored although some of the posts look battered and may be original. There has been a lot of study of the tree rings in ruins like this and a sequence has been established to date construction via tree ring analysis.

The canyon was a great place to hike. I remember that we hiked all the way down to the Rio Grande. When I looked at the web site for the monument now I saw that they had experienced flood damage to that trail and it is closed past the upper falls. Unfortunately -  I haven’t found the slides from that part of the visit – yet.