This gallery starts off with another visit to El Malpais National Monument on the morning of the 20th (photos 1-12), after which a drive north brings us to the ruins at Chaco Culture National Historic Monument. Many people just call this Chaco Canyon, and it has one of the largest and most impressive array of native ruins I have yet seen. That first evening, we only had about an hour to photograph (13-29) before the sun set. The next morning we got an early start at 7am, and spent the next 6 hours (it sure didn't feel that long!) wandering around both the outside and inside of the extensive ruins (30-87), where there was an amazing display of ever changing changing light and shadow.
At this point, we decided to go on a longer hike, which took us on a trail out of the canyon and north to the Pueblo Alto ruins up on a plateau. On the trail heading up and north-east of the canyon, you can see an overview the largest section of ruins from the trail (photo 89). The trail went east before heading north to Pueblo Alto and at one point (99-100) we came across some old, weathered steps carved into the sandstone. After what seemed like a fairly long hike, we finally came to the Pueblo Alto ruins (101-113) and spent a short time exploring these before heading back down, with a few final views of the larger ruins (114-115) ending this gallery.
Please note that GPS coordinates only locate the approximate areas where the photos were taken and may not be accurate. My detailed GPS tracklogs were lost due to a software glitch.
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