Mesa Verde Pix (bandwidth warning)

[Stephanie]

I've never been to Hovenweep - how is it?

As for pottery - there should be quite a bit in galleries - I can't remember seeing any in downtown Durango, but I'm sure there must be some. Since I live in NM and pottery is one of "the" things around here, I don't pay too much attention to it.

[Wags]

I really liked the Hovenweep site, but my priorities may not be the same as others since I used to be an archaeologist and I can be easily entertained by ancient minutia. Its a small National Park, but nicely done. The rangers give a couple tours per day and thats the only way you get to see the petroglphs. We just missed the tour but had a chance to talk with him and he was very informative (and carrying a gun... !?!)

The main site is in a small but very scenic canyon. I kept thinking it would be a great place to live, although we were there in the spring when the weather was just about perfect. Some of the masonry there is quite exceptional. The drive out from Cortez through McElmo Canyon is really cool, too. We also went to most of the outlying sites. I found some petroglyps at one of those sites but I probably wasn't supposed to be climbing down to where they were (and I scraped up my leg pretty good climbing back up). You need a vehicle with pretty good clearance to get in to a couple of them.

I didn't find the pottery I was looking for but did get a very nicely done arrow at Four Corners and a couple of Zuni fetishs to take home with me.