Miranda and I read the book Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings and it inspired us to take a dendrochronology-themed trip to the southwest. Dendrochronology is the science of using tree ring patterns to date wood and by association, structures that were made from wood.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Photos
I wanted to do a longer trip than Miranda and wanted to be able to sleep in my car during the portion of the trip when Miranda wouldn't be there, so I drove to Tucson and stopped at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Arizona in southern California on the way. Miranda flew into Tucson and I picked her up at the airport.

Tucson Photos
We took a tour of the world's premiere dendrochronology lab at the University of Arizona. No schools offer a degree in dendrochronology, so the scientists there come from a variety of backgrounds. They have boxes and boxes of wood samples from all over the world that they use to establish a tree ring chronology for each region. Each region has a pattern of rings where some rings are thicker than others due to water or other environmental conditions that year and that pattern of sequential ring shapes is shared by all trees in the same area. Once a chronology of tree ring patterns has been established, any new wood specimen can be dated by looking for where its ring patterns match up with the known chronology.

We also toured the Biosphere, which was once a test site where people hermetically sealed themselves inside a building for two years to simulate what living on Mars would be like and since then has become an ecological research facility.

Petrified Forest National Park Photos
We drove to Petrified Forest National Park, in Arizona, north of Tucson. Petrified wood is when a tree dies and is buried in an anaerobic environment that prevents microbial decay. Then under certain conditions, over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, minerals replace the carbon in the wood, turning it to stone. But when this happens, the shape of the wood is retained, so it looks like wood, but it's stone. It was amazing how much petrified wood there was. It was just scattered all over the ground for miles.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument Photos
Continuing north, was Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which is a beautiful canyon that contains lots of caves / overhangs that ancient people lived in. It's hard to believe how high up some of the caves were tha people lived in. I have no idea how they climbed up and down the rock faces to get to these places day in and day out. Many of them seemed too high to reach by ladder.

Chaco Canyon National Historical Site Photos
Heading into New Mexico, we visited Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, which we were looking forward to because it was discussed in the Tree Story book. It was once a hub of Puebloan society and lots of stone buildings remain. Using dendrochonology, scientists have been able to date the exact year that each building was constructed. And from that, we know how the clusters of building evolved over time. Knowing that level of detail really makes the site come alive. It was interesting to see how the sizes and patterns of stone used in the building changed over time too. For whatever reason, the earlier rooms used much thinner stones and then in later years, larger stones started getting mixed in, but in well defined layers. The final buildings had exclusively large stones. It seemed to be an aesthetic / style choice, not a structural one since even the early walls were still standing. Chaco Canyon, as well as the other Puebloan villages in the surrounding areas were abandoned and it's not completely clear why. It's speculated that it may be due to a prolonged draught. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of turquoise and other jewelry was excavated from the site in the early 20th century.

Bandelier National Monument Photos
At Bandelier National Monument, near Santa Fe, there were some cool cave dwellings where we were allowed to climb up ladders to enter as well as a "long house" built along the side of natural stone wall.

Santa Fe Photos
The Christmas Eve, Santa Fe closed some of their streets to cars and put lots of candles in paper bags along the sidewalks. Santa Fe is one of the biggest art communities in the countries and many of the galleries stayed open for the masses of people out on the closed streets, so we got to see some great art. We visited a unique place called Meow Wolf which had bizarre and colorful rooms of with seemingly random themes. It was a wonderland for kids, but we enjoyed it too. We also visited a couple of art museums in town.

Los Alamos Photos
We stopped by Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Manhattan Project was headquartered, and since it's still an active facility, we couldn't get in, but the main gain from the time of the war has been preserved. We visited a museum nearby and saw actual-size mockups of the atomic bombs. One of the real bombs was assembled at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, which is what our bedroom window at home overlooks.

Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument Photos
We saved Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument for Christmas Day because it was one of the few things open that day. We didn't have a white Christmas, but there was snow on the northern face of some of the mountains.

Braddock Gathering Photos
Miranda had a very early flight home, so I dropped her off and went back to sleep in my car in the airport parking lot. A few hours later, I flew to Wisconsin for the after-Christmas vacation Braddock gathering. It's always a blast to see everyone and we even got some snow.

Petroglyph National Monument Photos
I flew back to Albuquerque and visited Petroglygh National Monument, just outside the city. I've seen lots of petroglyphs, but never this many. There were hundreds of them on each trail.

Since I was passing through Farmington, I stopped by the house where Patricia grew up. There used to be Blue Spruce trees in the yard that her family planted, but apparently the new owners cut them down recently.

Aztec Ruins National Monument Photos
Aztec Ruins National Monument is named that way because settlers mistakenly thought were from the Aztec people, but was actually a Puebloan village. It was fairly small, but I really appreciated that they had restored one of the kivas (circular buildings built by Puebloans) to how it likely looked when it was built, which gave me a stronger appreciation for how they once looked after the remants of so many of them at Chaco Canyon.

Mesa Verde National Park Photos
Mesa Verde is famous for Puebolan cliff dwellings, but most of the park is closed in the winter, so I wasn't able to go into the ruins themselves. Additionally, it was very rainy and foggy, which obstructed some of the views, but I still enjoyed it. Dendrochonology was used here as well to date each building to specific years. Initially people lived in structures on top of the mesas, but then later build new structures in the cliff caves and moved there instead. I found that surprising because I would have expected them to start in the caves and then run out of room and build on top of the mesas. Finally, the abandoned the whole area, again potentially due to a prolonged drought, but interestingly, that this was over a hundred years after Chaco Canyon was abandoned.

Canyon of the Ancients National Monument Photos
I did a hike at Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, which didn't have the elaborate ruins of Mesa Verde, but did have some ruins and had canyon views.

Valley of the Gods Photos
I spent the night in the Valley of the Gods. Unfortunately it had been raining all day, which meant that the road through the valley wasn't passable and it was quite foggy, so I could get the full spectacular views of the valley even when I drove up above it. In the morning, I woke up inside a cloud and could barely see 30 feet.

Monument Valley Photos
Gazing into Monument Valley is one of the most iconic views in the world. Many westerns were filmed here, even ones that were supposedly set in Texas. I couldn't help but keep looking around for John Wayne.

Navajo National Monument Photos
I did a quick hike in the Navajo National Monument to see an overlook of a Puebloan ruins that were abandoned around the same time as Mesa Verde.

Antelope Canyon Photos
Antelope Canyon was even more impressive than I expected. Many of the photos of Antelope Canyon are from the upper canyon, which is more closed above and is famous for beams of light shining through during the summer. However, I went to the lower canyon, which is four times as long and lighter and more open, which was better for the season I was visiting. The organic curves of sandstone are cause by water erosion. When it rains heavily water fills the full 120m height of the canyon. After ascending out at the southern end and turning around to look back, the canyon just looked like a crack in the ground.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
In addition to the famous horseshoe bend and the massive Glen Canyon Dam, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area also had lots of beautiful rock structures. I did a hike to a natural arch, but at the end of the trial, I couldn't find the arch. I eventually realized that I couldn't see the arch because I was standing directly on top of it.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
I had been to Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument before, but never to the south side. I got to see mushroom hoodoos and a unique rock structure nicknamed the Nautilus due to a natural spiral tunnel through the center of it.

Snow Canyon State Park
While Snow Canyon is only a state park, it has views to rival national parks because it overlooks the spectacular Red Cliffs National Conservation Area. I hiked to a lava tube, ran up massive petrified sand dunes, and hung out in a red cave.