Today began bright and early as Katie had a horse trail ride booked for 8am and Matt and I had managed to book a Jeep Tour of White Mesa and New Mexico for the same time. We all left Sue with her feet propped up on the bed with her book, the TV remote and her phone within reach. (Katie, by the way loved her trail ride and enthused effervescently about it for the remainder of the day).
We met Clint in the lobby and he took us out for the next ‘four hours’. Unfortunately, it had started to drizzle so Clint took us to a form of Red Dot shop to get some disposable ponchos and then deviated off the normal tour to take us to some Sacred Pools of the Ancient Pueblo Indians. Do NOT call them Anasazi like I did, as this is a Navajo word meaning ‘enemy’.
We went here as we could get to it over sandstone and not get too muddy. The Sacred Pools were in a gully where the rain caused Pools of water to form and the Pueblo Indians used these for their daily life. There were also a series of petroglyphs here and Clint had a theory that they were depicting an ancient tragedy when a flood might have come down the gully and drowned members of the tribe. We also got to sample the local juniper which left a tart, sour taste for quite some time.
From here we drove over ‘tracks’ which certainly required the Jeep to be put into 4WD Low Ratio and got to see such sites as Corazon (an ancient volcanic plug) and The Dragon’s Back (a geological incline). During this, Clint kept us entertained with tales about the area and general chat, and his knowledge was amazing. Part historian, part geologist, part entertainer. We stopped at a non-descript location and when we walked about 10m from the trail, came across an Ancient Pueblo Village Site. No markings, no fenced off area. He had a drawing of what it would probably have looked like and we walked around, finding shards of pottery scattered around on the ground. We got back to the hotel around 1pm, the four hour tour had stretched into 5!
After catching up with Sue and Katie, we drove to the Sandia Peak Tramway, which takes you up to about 3.3km above sea level. Unfortunately, there was a fair amount of cloud cover, and as we neared the top the world disappeared and we could only see the tram car. A bit eerie. Luckily, there was a good bar at the top and sufficiently armed with another latte, we were able to brave the negative temperatures and wind for the time we were up there.