early plans

 My spouse and I are beginning to make plans for a driving trip through the southwest in late October or early November.  

I've started to think about places I definitely want to re-visit, and one of the first sites that came to mind is Mesa Verde.  I have been there three times.  There have been at least ten to fifteen years between visits and each time I've been there I've learned newly discovered information about the early inhabitants.  But there is another place that I find equally intriguing.  It is Casa Rinconada, a huge kiva (gathering and trading place) built by the Ancestral Puebloan people.  It's now part of Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

When we were in Alaska this spring one of the places we visited was a large building, a replica of one used by the earliest native Americans of that area as a meeting place.  It reminded me so much of the southwestern kivas, same step down round or rectangular area with a fire pit in the middle and a smoke hole at the top of the roof of the building.  I guess the design makes sense, how else would you construct a large gathering place, but I remember one of the lectures we enjoyed on our cruise ship showing a likely path of migration begining with prehistoric people crossing the Bearing Strait, west to east, when it was a land bridge and migrating along the west coast of what is now Canada and the US, all the way to Mexico.  

I find it fascinating to think about how far people travelled on foot all those years ago.  I find it fascinating, but I'm really glad we will be traveling by car.