17 Sep 19

The Casa Blanca is a gem in the wilderness. We had a lovely sleep followed by an excellent breakfast at the inn. Another day, another National Park. So, after our hearty breakfast, we hit the road to Chaco Cultural Center. And hit the road, we did. It is only about 50 miles from Farmington to the Visitor’s Center at Chaco, but it took 1:44 hours, because the last 15 miles to the park is unpaved and ROUGH!!! We survived the ride in and had a very pleasant 4 hours touring the ancient buildings (they do not refer to them as ruins round here) of Chaco, taking a ranger-led tour and driving the loop. Chaco is an amazing place; one interesting tidbit is that to build it, they hauled ~240,000 logs, some as big as 2.5 ft in diameter, manually (i.e., without the wheel or draft animals), down from the Chuska Mountains, more than 50 miles away. No wonder the place was eventually abandoned; the men were all exhausted from the above sustained effort and no longer had the energy to procreate. All very interesting, and we will need to come back, although we must camp next time, as the park needs a few days, and one round- trip on that road is enough, per visit. At 14:30, it was time to get on the road to Albuquerque, so we headed back out through the above-mentioned road, although the out-bound side of the road was much rougher and much longer, I’m sure. We finally pulled into the Extended Stay hotel in Albuquerque about 17:40, and after a quick happy hour, headed to the UNM area for dinner, where we had an excellent Mexican food meal at the local El Patio. Early to bed in anticipation of tomorrow’s 640 mile run to Dallas, not to mention the loss of an hour as we return to Central Daylight Time.