We have arrived at the RV park and Jerry and Carole are here and we will begin to explore this area together. Our first adventure is to drive the Turquoise Trail to the small artist town of Madrid. Leading into town there are artist studios all along the way with metal art work all along the road. The town was small and there were three tourist busses there so we only stopped for a few pictures.

Bandelier National Monument houses an area of homes of the Ancestral Pueblo people. The Jemez Mountains provided these people with obsidian to make tools. They also lived in the mountain in caves they dug out of the cliff walls. We hiked up to a second story dwelling and climbed into one of the caves. The rock of the mountain is so soft it was easy to dig into it and make caves to house families. The caves went from the base of the mountain to the top.  We deemed them the first condo complex. Although we crawled into holes in the cliff walls they used them for windows and entered from their roofs. Duffey and Carole climbed three primitive ladders to the top of the mountain, I took their picture and Jerry worried about them!

There were also houses in a circle on the ground of the village of Tyuonyi. This was a hugely populated area in the mid-1300s with around 500 people living in Tyuonyi for over 400 years. The ground houses used the ground floor to store their corn and grain. They made the ground floor very secure so rodents could not get their food supply and they lived on the second floor. The life span of the average Ancestral Pueblo person was 35 years.

We ended a day of hiking and exploring with amazing meals at Blue Window Bistro in Los Alamos. 

I have some amazing pictures BUT they are on my new iPhone and I can't figure out how to get them onto the computer! I'll add them later!!!