July 27, 2009 – Stanley, Idaho
Stanley is in the Salmon River Valley, quite near the Sawtooth Mountains. These photos were all in the evening after supper.
Sandhill cranes, between the campground and Stanley.
Large flock of sheep not too far from the cranes:
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Last week we took a short trip to eastern Arkansas and, after that, over to northeast Kentucky.
Our first campground was at Village Creek State Park. The park is located on Crowley’s Ridge, a geologic anomaly of rolling hills in eastern Arkansas’s Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
With five trails totaling 7 miles, we had hoped to spend one day in the park doing some hiking.
Unfortunately, there was some kind of gnats hatching out. After taking one walk the first evening where we couldn’t get away from them, we decided to alter our plans and check out some of the other parks in the area.
The first day, we went to Parkin State Archeological Park and Jacksonport State Park. The next day, we drove over to Memphis and spent a few hours at Mud Island. I’ll be posting more on these as I get the photo gallery set up for each one.
The last evening that we were there and the next morning before we left, we didn’t have much problem with insects at all.
Our next destination was Paducah, Kentucky, so that Karen could go to the annual Paducah Quilt Show. Karen has several posts on her blog from the quilt show:
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Elk, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, September 13, 2007
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Information: Yellowstone National Park information
Gallery: Around the Upper Loop, September 13, 2007
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Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, May 5, 2009
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Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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Mountain Farm Museum
May 6, 2009
near Cherokee, North Carolina
The Mountain Farm Museum is a unique collection of farm buildings assembled from locations throughout the park. Visitors can explore a log farmhouse, barn, apple house, springhouse, and a working blacksmith shop to get a sense of how families may have lived 100 years ago. Most of the structures were built in the late 19th century and were moved here in the 1950s. The Davis House offers a rare chance to view a log house built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s. The museum is adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. – National Park Service website
Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
Tennessee and North Carolina
Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
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September 15, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
On our last full day in Colorado, we toured the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Drive, visiting most of the archeological exhibits and overlooks.
Square Tower House cliff dwelling is named for the four-story-high structure standing against the curved back wall of the alcove. About 60 of the original 80 rooms of Square Tower House remain.
All of the cliff dwellings, including Square Tower House, were part of the final Mesa Verde building phase. People lived here between AD 1200 and 1300.
Small lizard on a ruin wall
After spending the morning among the ruins, we took a drive in the afternoon. At one point, we found ourselves on open range, with the road blocked by a herd of horses. As I very slowly eased the car forward, the horses parted and let us through.
image and information from September 15, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Pithouse – For thousands of years, native peoples were living in the surrounding areas before coming to Mesa Verde. As with people all over the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloans lived in modest dwellings — shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls, with entrances through the roofs.
In this excavation (above), what appears to be one pithouse is actually two. The larger one, built first, around AD 700, was destroyed by fire. The smaller one, which looks like an antechamber to a larger room, is actually a second pithouse built soon after the first one burned. It contains a new feature, a verticle ventilator shaft in one side, which appears in pithouses from then on — innovation!
Above is an Ancestral Puebloan kiva – an undeground religious room. The small circular hole in the floor is a sipapu, a symbolic entrance into the underworld – the Pueblo place of origin. This early kiva design was continued in the Mesa Verde villages and cliff dwellings.
Many fires have swept across Mesa Verde over time. Recent fires have exposed previously undiscovered Puebloan sites.
At our campsite on our final afternoon in
Colorado, 2009.
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