On a Quest for Ruins

I intended to add these photos to my blog several days ago, but with the cougar sighting & my birthday, these ones got put on the backburner. These pictures are all from the adventure we went on last week.

This photo was all of our group (minus Holli, Jon's friend, because she's taking the picture) standing on the Four Corners monument.

This is Joshua, Mark & Evan on the Four Corners monument. Evan is currently in four states all at the same time.
These pictures aren't in the order I wanted them in, but oh well. On the last day of our trip we went to a place called Hovenweep. It is a place that has lots of unique indian ruins. I am completely fascinated with indian & Mayan ruins and have read several books about them. This particular place has lots of tall buildings and towers overlooking a steep valley. This photo shows Eric standing inside one of the towers. At one time it had at least two levels (and maybe more) and had at least sixteen rooms. I am standing in one of the rooms and Eric is two rooms away (meaning there is one empty room in between us). It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the rooms are very small...they're about the size of a closet.
This is another photo inside the same tower. It had one window, lots of little rectangular holes throughout the walls and one doorway.
This is called Hovenweep castle. This was a huge structure. It was built right on the edge of the cliff (you can see that the rock below it kind of caves in a little and the rock it's built on is hanging out a little). Notice how the door is on the cliff side? That was the only door in the whole building. How did they get in and out?
This is Evan, Mark & Kendall in front of one of the towers. This shows the size of these structures.
This was an interesting structure. This is a hollow boulder and they built something inside of it. According to the information we were given, this one was not used for a residence, but they think it may have been used as a storage facility.
It is kind of hard to tell from this picture, but this structure was built on a rock. The rock is not attached to anything else...it is sheer drop off on all sides of the building. It is almost like the rock broke away from a larger rock. I don't know how they built it, and once it was built I don't know how they got into it. Again, as is with all of the buildings that we saw, there are lots of little rectangular holes throughout the building.

Here is another building built on a rock with sheer drop-offs all around.This is a good picture showing several buildings on the site. To the far right near the bottom is the rock building that was pictured above. To the left are two towers, also built on rocks. The one on the right of the two buildings is the one that Eric and I climbed into. It was one of the only structures that was accessible without a ladder.
Here I am in the opening of the structure just before I climbed in. You can see I'm standing on a big rock. All around this rock were steep drop-offs. It wasn't too dangerous otherwise I wouldn't have gone in (okay, maybe I would have because I am so fascinated by them!).
This is Eric's grandma sitting on the cooler eating lunch. She was a real trooper to go on our adventure with us.

Kendall and Evan took every opportunity they could to climb on the rocks at every stop we made.
We went on a back country road in search of more indian ruins. We took a side road that ended up being a dead end. We figured that there had to be a reason for the road, so we started scouring the cliffs and sure enough, we found a cliff dwelling. It was really far away, but this is a picture of it zoomed in as far as we could. It is amazing how well camouflaged the buildings are. Can you find it?
Here is another set of cliff dwellings we discovered on our tour. We thought we would be able to get into them until we got closer and realized it was built in a slight "cave" on the edge of a sheer drop off. How in the world did they raise children without them falling off the cliff and dying? There is no way to get to these dwellings without a ladder or major rock climbing skills (and this is true for most cliff dwellings in this area). If someone fell off the cliff they would certainly fall to their death, or if they survived they would have major injuries. I would love to take a walk back in time for a day or two and see how these people lived.