Chaco Canyon

Our next WHS for the trip was another native American site, located in a place called Chaco Canyon. This was way off the map, and required driving about 15 miles down what a ranger called the worst road in America - very rough and unpaved!

It was definitely worth it though, the Chaco Culture sites were really interesting. It was a series of huge dwellings (towns, really) scattered through a canyon. There were also a bunch of temples known as kiwa too, one of which we toured with a very enthusiastic ranger. It must be an exciting but frustrating field to study in, since the original inhabitants are long gone (the sites were occupied around 1000-1300 AD), and of course left no written records. It's not really even known who their descendants are, though it's assumed modern local tribes like the Pueblo and the Hopi are among them.

After spending a few hours here and filming our video we drove back out of the canyon and across to a town called Farmington, about the largest settlement in this corner of New Mexico. Lucky for us there was a local brewery where we stopped in for a pint and some dinner!Read more