Drive in the desert

After a week at home, we were ready for an adventure and decided to head to the desert northeast of Albuquerque on December 10th. At the beginning of our trip, I sat in the back to keep Sterling happy.

Cute Scott

Cute Sterling

Cute us...love Scott's "smile"... cute Stan was driving

Our drive led us down one neat looking canyon of sorts but we decided that we wanted to explore a different one and leave that canyon for another day. We drove for a long time up another road that led up a mountain. We ran into snow over the road and decided to turn around there. The last road took us to a dead end but we liked where it was going and had a ruin we wanted to check out. Our car had a check tire light come on, and then a check the tire right now because it's dangerously low. Stan got out of the car and could hear the air hissing out of our back right tire. We had a little bit of trouble at first getting the car up on the jack because the road was pretty sandy and hard to get a stable setting on. Tire changed we pressed on. We got to the end of the road and decided to save time, Stan would just jet over and check out the ruin to see if it was worth seeing. It ended up being really neat but our children were out of patience so we headed out.

Climbing up the mesa

A ruin wall

Black on white

You can see a dip in the land showing that there is a ruin underneath this land. The circular shape of the dip shows it was probably a kiva, generally a circular room.

More ruins.

And more.

A close up of the pile of room blocks that are shown from afar two pictures above.

More ruins walls.

On the very top of the mesa was this pattern of sandstone in a few places.

This was a really neat piece of pottery that looked like it was part of a handle on a jar.

This shows the thickness and shape of that piece of pottery.

And from one more angle.

This was most likely a spot they would have gathered water from after rain.

And this is it from afar. Can you see Stan on top?

What about now?

Meanwhile in the car...

Such a good day out in the New Mexico sun!