New Pictures from Puye Cliff Dwellings and Petroglyph Monument

In June Patricia and I took a short field trip sponsored by SAR to see the newly re-opened cliff dwellings at Puye. These ruins are part of the Santa Clara Pueblo. They were closed for several years after the Cerro Grande fire in 2000 and just re-opened in May. The fire did not cause any direct damage to the site, but the Santa Clara Valley, where the site is located, had a lot of damage that took years to deal with.

Oral tradition has it that the inhabitants left around 1577 and moved closer to the Rio Grande--just about 10 miles away--and are now known as the Santa Clara Pueblo. As usual, SAR made sure we had good guides. Ours was from the Sana Clara Pueblo and she was very knowledgeable about Puye but she was also free to admit when what she told us was speculation or could not be documented.

Here are a couple of websites with information about Puye: "pueblo ruin where the rabbits assemble "and Wikipedia.

There were lots of petroglyphs there and seeing them reminded me that I had been meaning to visit the National Petroglyph Monument near Albuquerque. So, while Patricia was spending some time on Cape Cod, I drove down to take a look at the Petroglyph Monument. It is a very big place just on the western edge of Albuquerque. Enclosed in the Monument are areas where more than 20,000 petroglyphs can be seen and where 5 volcanoes lay dormant. I chose to take the Boca Negara trail to see some petroglyphs without doing a long hike. On Boca Negra you have to do some climbing to get to most of the petroglyphs but the climbing was worth it. I have seen some of the petroglyph shapes (symbols, pictographs?) in other locations in New Mexico but there were also ones I had not seen before, such as this one:

The pictures from June start

here.

Updates for May

May was a busy month for us.

We went on a School For Advanced Research (SAR) field trip to the Cerrillos Hills where we trekked out to some prehistoric turquoise mines. The Spanish, and later the Mexicans and Americans, mined these same areas for lead as well as turquoise.


After looking at the mine sites, we moved on to an archaeological site called the San Marcos Pueblo. At one time, this was one of the largest Native American "cities" in the Gallisteo Basin. It was mostly abandoned after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. (Interestingly, the Pueblo Revolt is sometimes discussed as if it happened yesterday, instead of nearly 330 years ago.) San Marcos is not a public site, but we were able to see it with the help of Bill Baxter, who is responsible for the site. There isn't much to see above ground since all the adobe has "melted" but the remains of the bases of some of the walls were visible. However, you could hardly take a step without finding a pottery sherd from the long occupation. There was a mission church there at one time, but it too has vanished. The pictures I posted from that trip can be found in the New Mexico 2009 album here.

Karl and Marlene stopped with us overnight and we took them out to the Pecos National Monument. We can always find new pictures to take there even though we visit it often. We really enjoyed their visit and we hope they come back soon.

I took a trip to West Linn to visit Tevya, Noah, and Kris. Noah has changed a lot since I last saw him in January. He amazed me with everything he can do and how curious he is. One of the good things about being a grandparent is that I don't have to live with that curiosity 24/7 as Tevya and Kris have to. I took quite a few pictures of Noah. You can find some of them starting at this point in the Noah Album. I posted a couple of videos that I took of Noah on the Noah movie page.


Towards the end of May, Patricia and I drove over to Las Vegas to see Kate, Jeff, and Abby. This was the first time we had seen Abby since she stopped being tied to the oxygen tank. Just like Noah, she has changed a lot since we last saw her in mid-March. We took lots of pictures and posted them in the Abby picture album starting on this page. At the end of this set of pictures, be sure to watch the short video of Abby happily blowing raspberries.

You can look at the pictures Becky often takes of Abby when she is watching her on Kate's workdays. That Snapfish album is here.

Introduction

I thought that a blog might be a good way to post updates about what we have done with our website.

By signing up to receive a feed (under "Subscribe to our blog with a reader" on the left hand side) your blog reader (usually your browser) will show you when there is a new post--as long as you remember to regularly check your feeds.

By signing up to get notices by email (under "Subscribe via email" also on the left hand side) you will automatically get an email when I post a new entry.

I have already posted a couple of entries ("Our SAR field trip April 16 to 19th " and "Update from April 6th, 2009 ") as a way to show you what I have in mind for the blog.

The blog should make it easier to see when we have done an update and I can include pictures and a little more narrative than I do in the update emails I have been sending out. I'll still send out the emails, but I will watch to see how many people subscribe to the blog and that will help me decide whether to put more or less detail into the blog entries.

As you look at the blog, note that there is a section called "Some links". In there I put a link to our website. There is also a link to the blog Tevya has been authoring. That is a great piece of work and Patricia and I look forward to reading each entry. I also included a pointer to the Snapfish album where I post the pictures of Abby that Kate sends us nearly every day. I have just changed the order of the pictures in the album so the latest pictures are at the beginning of the album.

This is a picture of some of the pottery sherds that were picked up along the trail to the Pinnacles site we visited on our SAR field trip. One of the things I have discovered about pictures in the blogs created with Google's Blogger is that if you click on them, you get the original image. If you do that with this image, you will see lots of detail. The same trick works with the pictures on our website; if you click on a thumbnail, you get a medium-sized picture and if you then click on that picture, you get a full-sized original.

I hope you find this blog useful.

Our SAR field trip April 16 to 19th

Patricia and I had signed up for a field trip sponsored by the School for Advanced Research (SAR) to an archaeological project near Truth or Consequences. On the way there we stopped at the two Salinas Mission sites we had not yet seen. First we stopped at Abó and then Gran Quivira.

The ruins of the mission at Abó.

The pictures of these two impressive ruins start here on our website.

Then we took some back roads through Lincoln County past Ruidoso to the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero where we stayed the night.

On Friday we took more back roads through Cloudcroft and through Alamogordo and stopped at White Sands National Monument. Neither Patricia nor I were expecting such an extensive are of (gypsum) sand that looked more like snow than sand.

We drove on to TorC where we met the SAR group at the Sierra Grande Inn. We stayed there for a couple of nights. Friday night Karl Laumbach (who heads up the Cañada Alamosa project) and his wife Toni gave us some background on the project. Saturday we spent 10 hours in the field driving to Cañada Alamosa and visiting a couple of the sites. It was very interesting. Patricia and I rode around with Karl and Toni all day so we got some extra information. Some of the pictures we took are posted here.

Update from April 6th, 2009

In early March I told you about some updates to our website. While we were on the road to visit Kate, Jeff, and Abby in Las Vegas, we were able to spend a little time in Chaco Canyon and we overnighted in Monument Valley. We also drove through Zion National Park. As expected, we took lots of pictures on the road and LOTS of pictures while we were in Las Vegas.

It is hard for us to believe how much Abby has changed just since we were there in mid-January. She is as bright, energetic, and curious as any 6-month old. While we were there she learned to flip from her tummy to her back so she is now capable of doing a complete 360 turn. While that complicates things because of the oxygen tube, it allows her to move around a good bit and do even more exploring. Since we left, she has learned to sit up on her own without any support. That will expand her horizons even more.

One way to see the changes in Abby is to look at my Snapfish album that contains the pictures that Becky (Jeff's Mom) takes almost every day. Kate sends them to me and I put some of them on a Snapfish album. Becky spends a lot of time and effort to get these wonderful pictures and we really appreciate them. I try to update the Snapfish album within a day of getting a new set of pictures.

The newest pictures are here. In there is a "folder" of Chaco Canyon pictures and a "folder" of Monument Valley pictures. I included a link to a map of Monument Valley on the web pages, but here it is again. When you look at our pictures of Monument Valley, it might be useful to have the map open in another window. In fact, the map even has an inset which, if you click on it, will show you almost exactly where we were when we took many of the pictures.

For those of you who can't wait to get to the Abby Pictures, they start here.

I have also added some pictures from Tevya and Kris to the Noah pictures. They include another set of class pictures. And speaking of changing, Noah is learning something new every day and growing rapidly. According to Tevya, not everything he learns is good--or quiet--and it is hard to keep up with him. I get to make a quick trip to West Linn to see for myself next month.

I also added some pictures to the Abby album. Some of these are duplicates from the Snapfish album and some are from our most recent visit that I did not post elsewhere.