BANDELIER THE HARD WAY

My humans set off this morning for a tour of the Bandelier National Monument. It's about 50 miles away from our camp here in Santa Fe. The hard part? You can no longer drive into the canyon in your car. They now have a shuttle service from White Rock to the archaeological site.  Of course they just missed the bus and had to wait another 1/2 hour before the next one. I guess that was a good thing because now there are very few people visiting the cliff dwellings since it is more difficult to get into the canyon.


Seven or eight centuries ago this area was the

home of an Ancestral Puebloan community. There are cave rooms carved out of the soft rocks and a circular community village to explore. Jim climbed up into several of the caves using ladders against the rock walls so that Kathe could take his picture. There is also a short mile hiking trail all through the site that climbs up on the ridge of the cliff and past several of the dwellings.

It was a beautiful sunny day and it started to thunder as they were waiting for the bus back to White Rock, but it didn't rain until they were already in the car on the way home. We are all a little sick and tired of the rain every night.  Last night we had quite a lightning and thunder show here on the top of our mesa, almost as scary as fireworks. I guess we should be glad it happens at night instead of spoiling our days.