Hovenweep Adventures, Animal Sightings and Lunar Eclipse-photo heavy

The Southwest area of the US is a plethora of amazing sights. Of course, you've all heard of Mesa Verde, Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion. These are all amazing in their own respect. There are several smaller, yet just as magnificent national parks and monuments in the same area. One of the lesser known National Monuments is Canyon of the Ancients that includes Hovenweep National Monument(which straddles Colorado and Utah). In recent years, access and trail development in the Canyon of the Ancients area has been expanded. The Canyon of the Ancients is a network of ruin sites spread over 170,000 acres. Some of the sites have developed hiking trails, other sites are just a short walk to the ruins. Visitors are usually referred to the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores, Colorado as a starting point and for directions. The museum is quite nice and they have a nice ruin on site. If you have a couple of days, you could base camp in Mesa Verde(only about a 30-45 minute drive away from Dolores, CO) and then do a day trip to the Anasazi Heritage Center and then venture to a few of the other sites. Join me below the pumpkin orange circle for more adventure!

My most recent trek to Hovenweep was September of this year. Hovenweep is about a 1.5 hour drive from the Mesa Verde/Cortez area(more like 2 hours with my Dad driving pulling a camping trailer). The road goes through McElmo canyon which houses the Drew Guy winery. I've never stopped there but have had their wine(which is worth a taste). Upon arriving at Hovenweep, you are greeted with a visitors center that is the starting point for your adventures at the park. There is running water, but it definitely tastes like desert water! But is potable and available at the visitor center and the campground. The campground only has 30 spots and has never been filled to capacity(smaller rig friendly-only a couple of spots that big rigs can fit). There are bathrooms at the visitor center and campground, but no other services. You are over 40 miles from the nearest town with a gas pump or store with food and ice.

Hovenweep, meaning "deserted valley" in Ute/Paiute was proclaimed a national monument in 1923. The ancestral Pueblo people started filtering into the area around 700 AD and the high time for this region was between 1230 and 1275 AD. Due to drought and an overuse of natural resources, the region was deserted by the late 1200s. They left a wealth of ruins and evidence of their lives. They grew the basics of corns, bean and squash. There is also evidence that they grew cotton and amaranth. The architecture of Hovenweep includes pithouses, pueblos, ceremonial rooms or kivas, and towers.

The Little Ruin Trail is the highest concentration of ruins in the park(starting from the visitors center); featuring Eroded Boulder House(which I think looks like a mushroom), Tower Point, Hovenweep Castle, Square Tower and a few others. Fall is a wonderful time to visit Hovenweep. The cooler temperatures are nice for hiking and you miss some of the heavy summer tourist traffic. It still does get warm during the day even in fall, so hiking in the morning is recommended. It is an easy 1.5-2.0 mile trail. It does descend into the canyon on one end and then you will need to climb the trail back to the rim. The rest is an easy hike on the rim of the canyon. There is even a wheelchair accessible section of the trail that will take you to the main canyon overlook.

If you get off of the beaten path, you will be rewarded with some of the sites that aren't visited as often. Most require a 4X4 truck, and not recommended in rain or right after the rain. When the sign says "rutted, washboard road ahead," trust the sign. Also be prepared that if you go down a road, to know how to get out. There are signs in the park noting that tow trucks start at $500! There is limited parking at some of the outlier sites. But given that 6 cars visit those sites each day and one is a park ranger, you should be good.

We saw LOTS of desert wildlife. We saw a wide variety of lizards, from big to small to green to brown. I also had the pleasure of seeing a Racer Snake inside the campground. I'm not a fan of snakes in any form, so this was quite the treat! Luckily I had just bought a field guide to critters of the SW and found out that he was not venomous. We also saw ravens, rabbits galore, a coyote, chipmunks and squirrels. There was also a lot of desert greenery out including sagebrush, rabbit brush, junipers, Mormon Tea bushes and several other bushes. The cactus were long done blooming, but there were several yucca and other cactus as well.

Hovenweep, like many of our national parks and monuments is in danger of losing federal funding. We visited the park the weekend before October 1st and the ranger was telling us that we were lucky that we came that weekend and not the next since there was the fear of a government shut down. We inquired if they were doing tours down into the canyon to the petroglyphs and the ranger kind of chuckled under her breath. She said that she had been the only ranger on site all summer and she had JUST gotten 2 part time helpers to finish out the season. She said with being short staffed they hadn't done any tours all summer. Back in the day, you could actually take the trail unguided down into the canyon that takes you closer to the sites in the canyon and the petroglyph wall. Due to vandalism, the park now does guided tours down there, but weren't this year because of the budget cuts. I believe that the visitors are really missing out on a lot by not being able to take this tour. You do get to see a lot of the sites from the rim tour, but there is a whole other world down in the bottom of the canyon. What will we do to support our parks to keep them open?

Here are a couple of the outlier sites that I visited this trip:

Hackbury Site - that is a BIG boulder that the square tower is on. We often wonder not only how the people got up and down into the site, but how they hauled all of that rock up there to build it. Amazing Architecture.

Cajon Site - on a clear day you can see the spires of Monument Valley from this site. You can also see Shiprock to the East!

Little Ruin Trail Adventures:

Blue tipped Lizard

Sagebrush lizard

Raven on Ruin

Then Mr. Raven found a buddy.

Hovenweep Castle

Cabbage White Moth on Rabbit Brush on the way out of the canyon.

Pretty desert flowers.

Chipmunk in a Juniper Tree at our Campsite.

And then we got to experience the Lunar Eclipse! The park rangers brought out their big telescope out so that we could watch the eclipse and we also took a gander at Saturn(we could see the rings!), the Milky Way and some other amazing constellations. We also viewed the eclipse through some high powered binoculars.