Bandalier

This year the Keystone meeting was in January at Santa Fe, NM. Because of school, no family this time. I had to go to a meeting in San Diego first. Got some great views out the air plane window.

It really is GRAND. The Grand Canyon from the air. South Rim is on the left. See it from the ground in the July 2007 blog.



Monument Valley from the air.



Monument Valley from the ground in summer 2007 (you can see the rest of that trip in the blog archive). This vantage point is near the tip of the snow covered wedge shaped ridge at 9 o'clock in the image from the air. The narrow looking tower in the airplane image is the tower on the left.



Bandalier National Monument is about an hour drive from Santa Fe. It is an ancient indian site. It had already been long abandoned before this area was seen by early european explorers. They carved small rooms into the face of the cliffs of soft rock. You can see the multiple holes, which are the rooms in the cliff face.



In certain places there are ladders in place allowing visitors to climb up to the rooms. Some are interconnected making them rather large. Cindy, Minh, and Rowena visiting one of the bigger rooms.



The rooms cover large areas of cliffs in the region. Unfortunately, much of it was still closed because of snow and ice.



I think that the people who lived here were very short. I could only stand in one room. It was a tight fit as you can see.