Bandelier

(It's also known as Beans Canyon, or at least the most fascinating part of the property.)

One of the few regrets from our visit: using the shuttle service prevented us from photographing Sherry near this entrance sign. 

On the Saturday of our four-day swing through New Mexico we visited a National Park Service site that had long been on my to-do list. Bandelier National Monument is located near Los Alamos. It features an unusual valley that had been home to Pueblo peoples four or five centuries ago.

From the cliff face at Bandelier

The cliffs loom above the settlement remains. 

I thought a dramatic picture would be one of the sky against the cliffs. 

Okay, that's a little better. 

The homes in this unusual valley were quite unusual in themselves. Cavates, or man-made caves, on the sides of the cliff served as these homes.

Caroline scales the ladder to find a cavate. 

Caroline receives instructions from Sherry about climbing down from another cavate. 

I should probably use the term man-enhanced caves because these Pueblo Indians didn't start from scratch in this valley. The cliff face's unusual properties (the rock is called tuff) created an interesting freeze-thaw phenomenon on the south-facing side in which cavities were opened in the rock. Some were small. Some were large. Many were kinda big and perfect to be enlarged into an actual dwelling space.

From a distance, the holes nature has left in the cliff faces resemble beans, hence a secondary name for the site: Frijoles Valley.

Close-up of valley settlement remains. 

Settlement remains from along the cliffside. 

Settlement remains. 

The Pueblo who lived here built residences in the side of the cliffs. But they also built a free-standing settlement on the valley floor, of which some remains remain. There was also evidence of a long house built along the foot of the cliff.

One part of the site we missed seeing was the Alcove House, which is apparently awesome, but spending only a long weekend in the area creates some limits on what one can fit in.

- - -

I told Sherry that a visit to Bandelier was a non-negotiable part of our New Mexico trip. This is a site I've obsessed over seeing since 2015. What sparked this obsession? A calendar I bought Sherry which hung in our kitchen that year. It was a calendar featuring WPA-style posters of select national parks. Each month I got to see one of these beautiful posters hanging on our wall. For some reason, Bandelier's enchanted me the most. I think it was February of that year.

The poster.

When 2015 was over, the calendar had a second life as posters in my room. I took the calendar apart, laminated the pages, and hung them atop my front board. So 180-some days a year, I find myself enchanted by the poster again. This was simply a site I had to visit.

I even acted a bit like an idiot at the one house. 

And it didn't disappoint. The site actually made me giddy. So did Golden Gate Bridge when I saw it in 2012. So did Devil's Tower when I visited it in 2004.

In my previous post I wrote that had Sherry and I not taken the kids with us for this wedding that I would have regretted the awesome things they missed.