Last week was crazy here. We spent many hours getting ready for the big open house at the farm. It went great and we had a tremendous turnout, but boy were we tired at the end of it all. (We made something like 50 pizzas, 3 trays of lasagna, salads, bread, 20 or so pies, and cheesecakes.)
We also had our first overnight visitor at the guest house. It was great to have Brad’s mom here, and we put her to work! (I’m a little worried that we are going to get a reputation for working our guests to exhaustion. :)
After all that, we finally made a trip to Gila Cliff Dwellings. Over the past five years or so, we have made several attempts to go there but for a variety of reasons, none have come to fruition.
This park is only about 2 hours from our house, and it is fabulous! We’ve visited several other cliff dwellings, but have seen none like this where they let you actually go into the dwellings themselves. It was great. (The hike to the dwellings is a short one mile round trip.)
These structures were built by the Mongollon people who lived in the area in the late 1200s AD. They apparently only occupied the dwellings for one generation. No one knows exactly why they came or left. There are six separate caves with 46 rooms.
The area surrounding the park is beautiful country, and we look forward to going camping there in the future.
Very nice photographs of the Cliff Dwellings. You have captured some unique and scenic perspectives.
I’m collecting links to all the blogs and personal websites around the San Simon Valley and Rodeo and Portal and have put them on Blogging from the Boot Heel as a way to connect all the bloggers in the valley. If you know of others please send them along.