Spring in the mountains

Saturday it was time for another adventure and there was yet another ruin that we wanted to head to. From what we could see on Google earth, it was just going to be all covered over with dirt and vegetation but we were in for a fun surprise.

Our plan was to drive to the mesa and the hike along the road to the end of the mesa to see the ruin. As we drove along, we were amazed at how green and beautiful this forest is. We've had unusual rain this spring here and Saturday was overcast with a chance of rain. We decided to take our chances.

As we drove along the dirt road toward our planned stopping spot, Stan noticed a road on an old map he had that wasn't on the newer map. The road went down into a ravine and back up onto the mesa we wanted to be on. We decided to go for the adventure and add a little workout to our planned walk by stroll on the mesa. 

Here we are at the outset of our journey, happy and dry.

As we started down into the ravine, it was easy to find the road but it surely hadn't been driven on for at least 30 years.  We decided to "off-road" it a little and make our own path which lead to us climbing straight up the mountain.

It may not look super steep, but here is me gasping for breath.

One might think that I had the harder load with carrying the baby, but with all the baby things I made Stan carry in his backpack, he definitely had the heavier pack.

Scott is getting bigger and bigger. His head is finally sticking up and over the carrier and soon we'll stop using the infant insert!

 And then we reached the ruin! It was so neat!! We haven't seen standing walls like we saw here at any other random ruins we have been to in this area. From the information we have found since on the internet, there could have been more than 1,000 rooms at this ruin with four kivas and even farming.

See if you can find Stan in this pic.

This wall was neat because the plaster is still on it

 
We decided to book it out of there because a storm seemed to be coming our way, and it sure found us. We got rained on most of the hike back, an experience that has only happened a couple other times in New Mexico.

And a few pictures of our cute boy as we were getting ready to drive home:

We couldn't get over how beautiful the forest was and with the fresh rain, it was a perfect day to be in the forest. 

We passed by this old run down cabin that looked like the lincoln log cabins we'd build as youth.

It was an absolutely perfect outing!