Utah Vacation Continued (Hovenweep)...

Tue May 4
We traveled via highway 163 and then 262 onto the Navajo Indian Reservation and on to Hovenweep National Monument near the Colorado border. We found campsites in the campground and set up camp, ate lunch then went to the visitor’s center and took a ride to several outlying ruins. We first visited the Cajon group to the far south then traveled to the farthest north site to visit the Cutthroat Castle and the Painted Hand Pueblo. The forest service was doing work to stabilize Cutthroat Castle and Painted Hand had two or three very faint hand prints on the wall under the overhanging rock that supported the structure. We then stopped to visit the Holly, Horseshoe and Hackberry sites on the return to camp. Each site or group of sites was a couple of miles off the highway to parking areas with short to half-mile hikes to the actual structures. All were very interesting and many were in amazingly good condition considering that no restorative work has been done to any of them. It always leaves one wishing they could go back in time to see the original structures and people in their time.
Wed May 5
Today we toured the Little Ruin Canyon near the visitor’s center. It was a pleasant two-mile walk. We saw a collection of many ruins within a relatively small area at the head of a Y-shaped canyon. We then traveled a narrow winding highway G through the reservation to Cortez, Colorado. The campground at Mesa Verde National Park is not yet open for the season so we camped in a nearby commercial RV park. There we noticed that the new tire put on at the beginning of our trip was bald and the other dual was also nearly worn bald. The new tire should not have been matched with a different brand of tire with some wear which resulted in both tires being destroyed in 400 miles. Now we have this problem to deal with before we can visit the Park and start for home in the next couple of days.