Favorite Photos

I have been silent for a few days, preparing myself mentally for the arrival of my in-laws on Friday. All I will say at this point is that they will be ...inspirational...from a blogging point of view.

For today, I want to say, "Good-bye" to my Durango vacation by posting a few pictures. I'm trying to link to Flickr to show off some more, but I have some stuff to figure out, first. At any rate, these are my favorites.

This is a petroglyph, from about the 13th century. Petroglyphs were pecked into rock faces by the ancient people, by means of another rock. Here's a nice bighorn sheep, and the panel had hand prints, warriors, a cougar, and "kissing" birds, which is an image I hadn't seen on a petroglyph before. Southern Utah and the Four Corners area have a lot of these, as well at pictographs, which involve painting on the rock faces with pigments. Do I sound school-teacher-ish? Dear me. How educational.

Daughter Sara, loving her moment of being in four states at the same time. "Gledwood", if you're out there, I put this one in so you could see what it's like.

The Prickly Pear cacti were blooming in pink, yellow, orange and this deep red.

Nathan was jealous that his older sister has a camera, and was using mine constantly (which means I had to supervise him constantly); we got him a disposable camera at the grocery store in Durango, and this is what he looked like for most of the rest of the trip. He adored it and can't wait for his pictures to get back from the developer. I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I'm expecting a lot of blurs. Every time he pressed the button, he moved the camera down about 4 inches. We'll call them "art shots".

This is an underground kiva (I feel another school-teacher-y fit coming on...). The prehistoric Puebloan people that lived in the region built them for religious and community activities. Mesa Verde National Park has reconstructed the roof on this one and placed a ladder so you can go down and see what it was like. Getting this picture was a major hassle, involving waiting obnoxiously until all the people who were in the kiva had come up, then clambering down in as fast as I could, before anyone's feet came down after me. Damn lucky shot.

Art shot. The stones in the bottom of the Animas River were so pretty.

This (Cliff Palace) is an example of what the ruins in Mesa Verde National Park are like. Four stories high in places. The Park didn't even need to do restoration of these - they've remained intact like this since the 1200s. This is just part of only one village. There are two other ruins that are at least this large, and loads of other smaller ones everywhere.