Living large in Small Places

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A five hour drive from Carlsbad NM to Santa Fe. The terrain wasn't too different as the trip from SanAntonio to Carlsbad, except for one new elelment - deserted towns. Not just one but many. Fortunately none of these empty towns had dead bodies, skinny starving dogs, or bleeding cats.

Sunday morning we met Arlene Ory from Historic Walks of Santa Fe at the Saint Frances Hotel. She joined us in our rental car and off we went to Brandelier National Monument. It is aprox one hour from downtown Santa Fe. Arlene gave us an overview of Santa Fe, the surrounding mountains and the secrecy of Los Alamos. We were able to park close to the start of the trail and museum.

"Brandelier National Monument encompasses 33,000 acres of rugged but beautiful canyon and Mesa country. Humans lived in the area over 11,000 years." Impressive as we try and find our ancestors who lived a few generations ago.

FACTOID: the Rio Grande runs through the Park. 70 miles of trails and 3 miles of paved road.

We walked the beautiful trail to the Ancestral home of the pueblo Indians. The cliff side dwellings are preserved as discoverd in the early 1900's.

Attached is a link to a video that illustrates the original hillside dwellings

https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=B97E67EE-155D-451F-67806D0D8A341F91

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Photos

Standing in the cliff dwellings
Views of the trail to the dwellings