Chaco
So, I finally made it up to Chaco Canyon on Monday. Had to rent an SUV to do it (more on that later) as there is pretty much only one way in and that’s after 20 miles of bad road. Chaco sits out in the middle of nowhere - something which New Mexico has an abundance of - sort of North of Grants, Southeast of Farmington, West of Santa Fe and Northwest of Albuquerque. It’s some pretty desolate country, very near the Bisti and De-Na-Zin Wilderness area.
The multi-storied structures in the canyon were built more than a thousand years ago by the Anasazis, the ancestors of Pueblo Indians. The earliest of these structures, Pueblo Bonito and Una Vita, were started around 850 AD while those such as Kin Kletso, Wijiji and Tsin Kletzin were begun as late as 1100 A.D. By 1250 A.D. the buildings were abandoned and everyone was gone, leaving behind a grand mystery for archeologists and anthropologists to chew on and argue over.
