Oct. 2nd
 
[Kellam]
Went to the Ute Mtn. Ute tribal park for a site tour today. Got a good price on the tour--$160 for all. Great day for it, too. Rick, the Ute guide and two annoying tourists from Santa Fe-the type who moved here from S. Cali, are independently wealthy, and think they know everything about the Southwest.

Drove 45 min to top Mesa Verde (the Ute tribe part), climbed down 4 ladders (short ones) to Tree House. The namesake Doug fir in front of the south facing canyon rim alcove rooms had survived a substantial fire there earlier in the summer. Pretty cool spot. Intact 3 story tower against right back wall. Hiked under cliff to the SW for 10 min to next site, Lion House. CU excavated in 60's or 70's, and shored up an Ancestral Puebloan trail. 10 min to next house-Morris 5. Then on to the most isolated-Eagles' nest. Only way in via 35ft ladder and walk along narrow low alcove. Very cool, weel preserved site, with intact plaster in kiva and rooms. Spent some time up there telling climbing stories w/ Becky, Tucker and Ruth. Ruth hates heights, and was also getting nervous from our conversation, but she made it back down the ladder. Hiked back out. Lunch at overlook of Mancos Canyon. Visited some rock art sites that were pretty intricate, near one was a substantial roomblock pueblo that screamed "Chaco" very likely an outlier. Tons of PII pottery. Tucker pointed out that the structure of the pueblo-halfway up canyon rim, a narrow spot, with a 30 degree bend in the river made an ideally powerful statement.

Last site visited was "red pottery pueblo" a PII-PIII spot in the wide lower part of Mancos Canyon. Great open fields of grasses and sage with high cliffs beyond. LOTS of stuff in midden, some Washington Pass chert, large pieces of pottery.

Epic stop to piss, whole car piled out, girls hid behind bushes, guys pissed into a dry wash. Got back, got dinner. I finished IF 15 and LT 5. Thinking about bed.

Chimney Rock,but not the one with an outlier on top.
Seth striking a pose.
A plugged granary door at Tree House, Ute Mtn. Ute Tribal Park.
Tree House, in Lion Canyon.
Ruth's back, Becky looking at something, the back of Tucker's head and the impressive Douglas Firs at Tree House.
Tree House. You can really see the effects of the fire that passed across the mesa top.
[Trevor]
I really enjoyed getting an opinion or at least views on the ruins and the past from a non white highly educated person. While we all seem to think our expensive educations place us above uneducated or un-academically based views on interpreting the archaeological record I think there is something very valuable in native interpretations of the past. They're ideas and opinions about it are not formulated in a western educated systematic system of thinking and base a lot on spiritual reasoning, which I think is important to some degree. I know that you cannot get a tree ring date from spiritual reasoning, but it can help and we should not shoot down a creation myth or a migration story as a helping explanation just because be are so smart we know it doesn't exist and has no scientific basis and therefore is unimportant and irrelevant. We have to remember that in looking for explanations in the past that they were most likely a very spiritual people too.
Seth, Chelsea, and Rick the guide looking at a well preserved kiva at Morris 5. Some bead drilling holes at Lion House. This tree is growing right out of the rock of the cliff face at Morris 5.
Seth striking another pose at the ladder entrance to Eagle's Nest House. Eagle's Nest House. Tucker on the entrance ledge of Eagle's Nest House.
[Chelsea]
A great kiva is located along the canyon floor that the guide says dates back to Basketmaker times, but the architecture seems to monumental for that time period. Archaeologists believe people lived here consistently over 600 years just from the pottery assemblage. The roomblock connected to the kiva is approximately 3 stories high. The kiva is one of the last great kivas in the Southwest that has not been excavated. The kiva seems very Chacoan in that it is monumental in size and part of an enclosed plaza. It is oriented almost due N/S. These features seem to indicate that it might be a Great House….It seems like something major was occurring at this site during its time of occupation as it is situated on the top of a hill in such a way that you have a line-of-sight down the canyon in opposing directions. Also, the masonry is in rubble mounds the sheer mass of these mounds suggests that the walls were possibly really large. Perhaps the walls utilized the double core-and-veneer walls like Chacoan great houses did in order to make the structure appear big.
A winter solstice marker in Mancos Canyon. More of the winter solstice marker. Rick the guide, two annyoning tourists from Santa Fe, and Trevor in front of some modern Ute pictographs
More modern Ute rock art. Red Pottery Pueblo, on the floor of Mancos Canyon, where--unsurprisingly--a lot of red pottery was found. Chelsea being tickled on the car trip back to Crow Canyon.
[Katie]
The tour guide…said some interesting things about the pueblos. He said that stories told that this was a place that people race to from Chaco. That would be pretty awesome if that's true, but it doesn't really give any insight into why they built great houses so far away from Chaco. However, it does reinforce that there was a connection between them. Chaco must have been an important place to have such a large area of influence. Pretty awesome.

[Tucker]
Our tour guide's name was Rick. Great story teller and pretty funny. He gave us a warning at the end to protect ourselves out there by thinking good thoughts when on sites and in kivas and to be careful around human remains. It was a powerful warning/blessing I thought.

A totally worthwhile tour.

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