Vacation - Part 2

Hello everyone, here is part 2 of the Taylor Family vacation.....

After spending a full day at the Grand Canyon, we drove in to Mesa Verde. On our way into Mesa Verde, we stopped a Four-Corners took some pictures and ate the biggest frybread I have ever seen. For those of you who don't know, frybread is a Native America food. It is a flat dough fried or deep-fried in oil, shortening or lard. The dough is generally leavened by yeast or in our case baking powder.

Four-Corners is a region of the United States consisting of southwest Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona and southeast Utah. The name comes from the Four-Corners Monument located where the four states touch—the only location in the United States that is on the boundaries of four states.

After we left Four-Corners, we headed to Mesa Verde National Park. We got up bright and early the next morning and headed to the park. JJ and I were completely taken back by how amazing some of the cliff dwellings were especially knowing that they were all hand made.

The Mesa Verde National Park features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the ancient Pueblo people known as the Anasazi. The Anasazi made these stone villages their home in A.D. 1200s. It is best known for several spectacular cliff dwellings — structures built within caves and under outcroppings in cliffs — including Cliff Palace, which is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North American.

The structures contained within these alcoves were mostly blocks of hard sandstone, held together and plastered with adobe mortar. Specific constructions had many similarities, but were generally unique in form due to the individual topography of different alcoves along the canyon walls. The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde reflected a region-wide trend towards the aggregation of growing regional populations into close, highly defensible quarters during the 1200s.

While much of the construction in these sites conforms to common Pueblo architectural forms, including Kivas, towers, and pit-houses. A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies.

After spending a day at the Mesa Verde National Park, we loaded up in the Mercury and headed to Durango so JJ and I could ride on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. This railroad is a narrow gauge heritage railroad in the State of Colorado that operates over 45 miles between Durago in La Plata County and Silverson in San Juan County. The railway is a federally designated National Historic Landmark.

The trackage was originally built between 1881 and 1882, by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, in order to carry silver and gold ore mined in the san Juan Mountains. The line was an extension of the D&RG narrow gauge from Antonito, Colorado to Durango. The line from Durango to Silverton, has run continuously since 1881. In March 1981, the Denver & Rio Grande Western sold the line and the D&SNG was formed. Some of the rolling stock dates back to the 1880s. The trains run from Durango to the Cascade Wye in the winter months and run from Durango to Silverton during the summer months.

After riding the train from Durango to Silverton, we met JJ's parents in Silverton. We ate lunch, did some shopping and some site seeing, then headed to Taos. On the way to Taos, we stopped off at The Aztec Ruins National Monument. This national monument preserves ancestral Pueblo structures in north-western New Meixco, located close to the town of Aztec. The buildings date back to the 11th to 13th centuries. This site was declared "Aztec Ruin National Monument" on January 24, 1923 and with a boundary change it was renamed "Ruins" on July 2, 1928. As a historical property of the National Park Service, the National Monument was administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.

After leaving Aztec we drove to Taos. That is all for now, will finish the last leg of our vacation next time.

We love and miss you all!!

God Bless, JJ & Jess