Another dawn

The dog is snoring against my thigh on the couch, Simon and Garfunkle are singing on iTunes, it's 14 degrees F outside and the sky is reddening along the southeast rim of the Mancos Valley. Looks like it will be a sunny day, probably warming up to be quite comfortable.

Yesterday I left for Torreon, NM, with the news that there was a winter storm warning for northern New Mexico. I was scheduled to take four food boxes to the Torreon Chapter for them to use in a Christmas party raffle to benefit the Torreon Community Store, an effort the Durango Friends Meeting has been supporting. 

The main problem was icy, slushy roads on the way down ... saw a few cars in the ditch and saw one pickup leave highway unexpectedly (no harm done). After I got to Torreon (26 miles west of Cuba, NM, on Navajo 9), I could see the storm coming in south of me and blue sky to the north, so I decided to come back by way of Pueblo Pintado and Chaco Canyon. I'm glad I did; it turned into a beautiful day for pictures!

For those who've never been to Chaco Canyon, it's mainly a set of 1000-year-old stone buildings built by Pueblo Indians in the canyon created by the Chaco Wash. So, I love the humor in the sign for a laundromat just east of Pueblo Pintado!

Pueblo Pintado, the ruin, is a set of beautifully built walls on a knoll to the west of the town of Pueblo Pintado ... it's like the ruins of a castle, standing there stark and alone. It's a Chacoan outlier (built in the style of the ruins in Chaco Canyon itself) and it is actually at the very head of the Chaco Wash. Drayton and I hiked there from Chaco one time.

As I headed on toward the south road into Chaco, a coyote was curious about my passage. 

Though I don't agree with the philosophy that you have to endure bad roads in order to somehow "earn" the Chaco experience, the south road is still my favorite route for its primitive character and the opportunity to experience the vastness of the San Juan Basin outside the canyon.

An American kestrel observed my passage from a rock outcropping at the south end of the road. A little later, I had a wonderful view of the road ahead, with only one set of outbound car tracks in the fresh snow (Fajada Butte is barely visible at the mouth of the canyon in the distance at the right). The clouds were beautiful, casting moving shadows over the scene and spotlighting sites, as can be seen on Fajada Butte in the closer picture, taken from just south of the park.

I did a very quick drive around the loop inside the park and again enjoyed the spotlighting effect of sunlight and scattered clouds. In the next to the top picture, Pueblo Bonito is at the right and a young couple can be seen on the top of the cliff at the left, looking down on Pueblo Bonito from the Pueblo Alto trail.

And finally, after finally getting gas near Bloomfield (a power outage had everything closed down in Cuba, Torreon, the park headquarters and highway 550 outside the park), I enjoyed a beautiful, clear late afternoon view of the snowy La Platas, looking north across Farmington from the NAPI area. 

A day of playing Santa Claus with wonderful side benefits! tv