Friday, 29 October 2021
I know. Hovenweep is a monument almost nobody has heard of. But it was high on my list of places to visit during my month in Utah, and you can see I've barely managed to squeeze it in before the end of the month.
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| today's route |
When I did my month in Colorado last year, I made plans to visit Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in far southwestern CO. Made campground reservations and everything. And then that sudden snowstorm hit that deposited only a few inches in La Junta in eastern CO but several feet in the mountain passes I had to traverse to get to my plans which, of course, had to be cancelled. I was deeply disappointed, because I didn't have time to get back down there after the snow melted.
Canyons of the Ancients is part of the same group of ancestral Pueblo people as those living at Hovenweep. They're within a reasonable distance of each other and one of the primary differences between the two is modern: Hovenweep is administered by the National Park Service and Canyons of the Ancients is BLM territory. I found a blog posting that talks about one couple's experiences in visiting both locations. https://pmags.com/echoes-of-the-past-hovenweep-and-canyons-of-the-ancients They took some really nice photos of the ruins at both places.
Here's what the NPS has to say about Hovenweep:
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| Hovenweep Castle |
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| Horseshoe Tower |
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| It's the stonework that fascinated me. Take a look at some of my photos below, and you can see they built of stones as regular as brickwork. |
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| This is a map of the set of ruins called the Square Tower Group. This trail guide shows the buildings were deliberately placed around a steep canyon. Amazing that they're still there. |
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| Part 1 (this stupid program is keeping me from arranging these in a reasonable order - try to follow the bouncing ball) |
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| Part 2 |
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Here are my photos:
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| Stronghold House |
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| looking across the canyon - see below for close-ups |
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| Twin Towers |
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| Rim Rock House |
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| another view across the canyon - This shows both the buildings in photos above and one in the photo below. |
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| Tower Point (shown in the far upper right of the photo above this one) |
Take a look at these closer views:
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| Imagine living on the edge of a cliff like this. |
You can see that this really is stonework. But the stones are so regular in shape that I thought it was brickwork until I really looked closely.
And here are the signs the NPS put up to explain more of what we were looking at:
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One of the other visitors told me, when I said, "You don't happen to know the elevation here, do you?", that his wife's phone said we were at 5,100'.
I find myself unable to explain how truly impressed, and even fascinated, I was by this place. I agree with the writer of the blog post I mentioned in the beginning, that this place is best appreciated by spending several days here and exploring and getting information from the rangers. The building techniques alone show what remarkable people lived here: these folks didn't have modern machinery that smoothed the edges and shaped the rocks that went into building both their perfectly round and their perfectly squared buildings. And I think any architect or construction engineer would want to study the ability these folks demonstrated for building still standing structures on the edge of cliffs. I'd like to come back someday with better shoes and stay in the park's campground (though they don't have hookups, so I wouldn't do it in hot weather) and spend more time seeing what there is here.
Last, but not least, the park service posted signs identifying some of the plants in the area a few of which I found interesting.
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| Big Basin Sagebrush |
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| Mormon Tea |
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| Utah juniper |
When I was on the way out, I took a couple of photos to show what kind of scenery the former residents might have seen.
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The mountains were at a distance, and what's close by is mostly sagebrush-covered desert. But it's been more than 900 years and doubtless there've been changes in things like water availability. Still, I think the mountains haven't moved in that time. This is what they saw.
On the road
The drive to and from was a real experience. The first 55 miles was road I'd driven on my way to Monument Valley, including 6%, 8%, 10% grades with s-curves. But when I turned off onto UT-262 for 8 miles and then onto a county road for 16 miles, things got interesting. First there was a long series of frost heaves, where I had to slow down to keep everything and everybody in the RV from hitting the ceiling.
I passed signs telling me to watch for loose cattle in this open range area, but what I saw weren't cows but horses. Quite a few of them. Well, first I saw a horse, then a squirrel cross the road. Then another horse ambled slowly across the road while I had to sit and wait. Later 2 horses and a colt crossed the road, and the colt was the only one that seemed unnerved by me sitting there. Then 5 horses were ambling down the middle of the road, and I saw them as I came around a corner. When they saw me, they moved off the road, but only just barely and only reluctantly. I don't mind sharing the road with anybody, but I do want some assurance they aren't going to change their minds suddenly. Didn't get it. But also didn't hit a horse.
There was one section of road that lasted for several miles where it was physically impossible for me to avoid hitting a pothole. There were too many of them. It didn't matter which side of the road I drove on - and I drove all over the road trying to avoid them - but the holes were too big and too numerous.
Then there was the half-mile section that wasn't paved. A ranger told me that was deliberate because the tiny village the road went through wanted people to slow down to protect the village school and church. It worked. I slowed down. And was grateful the unpaved section wasn't any longer than it was because it was nearly washboard-quality.
Fortunately I saw almost no traffic, either going or coming. And that was actually odd because there were a couple other cars at the monument's parking lot when I got there, and the parking lot nearly filled up while I was there, so clearly other people were coming this way. I just didn't see them on the road. Just as well since I was driving all over the place trying to avoid horses and potholes.
Driving back down US-191 and US-163 I took some more photos of the amazing scenery in Monument Valley, trying to give a clearer idea of what I was seeing here.
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| This is another angle of those sculpted, red-streaked hills around Medicine Hat. |
The RV in this video isn't mine, and you can see there were others stopped near this pull-out. A bit ahead you can see one of those silver vendors on the left side of the road. With the video, I was trying to show the extent of these monuments and what this countryside looked like.
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