Leslie and David's Wanderings: 2 April 2021 Hovenweep National Monument

Hovenweep National Monument is the final NPS site we planned to visit from Cortez. The visitor center is actually in Utah. We took the back roads (County roads) to Hovenweep in the morning. We arrived at the visitor center a little past noon. The visitor center was still closed due to COVID, but they had a table setup outside with park maps and a map of the ruins near the visitor center. They also provided park passport stamps on small pieces of paper. We decided to hike the Little Ruin trail (1.9 Miles), which drops down into the canyon near the visitor center and up the other side of the canyon before looping around the canyon rim and back to the visitor center. There are ruins along the rim of the trail and down in the canyon as well. We saw the Strong House, Twin Tower , Rim House, Hovenweep House, Square Tower, Hovenweep Palace, Tower Point, and Unit House Ruins. The trail down into the canyon and back up was a bit steep, which combined with the altitude, left us huffing and puffing a bit. The rest of the trail along the rim was an easy stroll. We had decided not to put on sunscreen, thinking we need to start on our summer tans. By the time we worked our way around the trail, we were beginning to wish we had. The architecture is fascinating, the way they built on the very edge of the canyon or even on top of boulders in the canyon. The amount of effort to bring material for building (Rock, water, soil, fire ashes for mortar) and balancing on a home made ladder to set the first few rows of rocks for the base of the wall. Seems incredible for people 1200 years ago. Hovenweep was made a National Monument in 1923. But amazingly they are still having land disputes with private land owners for access to some of the outlying ruins where the road crosses private property. After seeing the main site, we drove to the out lying sites, which took us back into Colorado. To get to the outlying sites, we had to take a dirt road. The road was in ok shape, rough in spots, but nothing the Behemoth couldn’t handle. We hiked out to the Horseshoe site (.5 miles) and Hackberry sites and were able to see where a water retention dam had been built to support their farming. We then drove out to the Holly site. The road down to the parking area for Holly was very rough and we were glad we had a high clearance vehicle. Leslie decided her legs had had enough and stayed in the Behemoth while David hikes the >5 mile trail out to the ruins. The Holly ruins were pretty cool since they were built on top of a huge boulder in the canyon. There was a side trail labeled Petroglyhs but David did not see any when he took the trail and there were no signs pointing to where they should be. The climb back out of the Holly parking area was steep and rough. We dropped the Behemoth into 4 wheel drive high to avoid spinning tires and make the climb easier. The other nearby site, Cutthroat, was closed due to the land dispute. Finished with Hovenweep, we decided to drive over to four corners monument to see if there was any way to get to the marker even though it was show as closed. The four corners monument is in the Navajo Nation Reservation. When we pulled up to the entrance, there was a heavy barb wire topped gate with warning signs declaring the monument was closed and no trespassing signs. So giving up on being able to stand in four states simultaneously, we headed back to the Wanderer.