A Desert Drive to Chaco Canyon

Enough with the foreplay.  Here’s a video of Chaco Canyon.

I’d been there once when I was a little kid, but I didn’t really remember it too well.  Upon going back, I found something just as awe-inspiring as walking the streets of Brussels, although in an entirely different way.  And it made it that much more amazing that I visited this place in the middle of nowhere, and I do mean nowhere, less than a month after standing on top of the Eiffel Tower.  It’s an interesting life I lead.

The place is awesome.  Here’s a link to their website, if you’re interested in reading about it a little bit.  It was built and occupied between roughly 800-1250 AD, and I guess it was quite the little cultural mecca for all the Native Americans in the area.  The scope of the place is astonishing.

Artist depiction of what the largest of the several pueblos in the canyon probably looked like.

And with an afternoon to kill in Grants, New Mexico, I hopped in my pickup, put the pedal to the floor….  I drove to the desert, fired my rifle in the sky and shouted ‘God, if I have to die, you will have to die.’  Ok, I didn’t do that.  That’s just an awesome line from Cowboy Dan by Modest Mouse, the song I used completely without permission in the video.  I suppose more accurately, I hopped in my rented Mazda 6, headed out to the desert, and took a whole crapload of pictures.  And then I made this.  Enjoy….

A Desert Drive to Chaco Canyon

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And with that, I’m of to beautiful Gonzales, Louisiana.

-B. Littleton