Mendonite Welkers: Chaco Canyon

We made it to and from New Mexico without a hitch! Phew! We are home now in Mendon safe and sound. We arrived home Saturday night at 10 p.m. It was a 10 hour drive home and I must say the girls were amazing in the car. Dave and I were sweating for a bit Saturday morning when his computer came up with the "cannot find the operating system error". How in the world were we going to survive 10 hours in the car with no movies! Thank goodness that prayers are answered because I was sure saying some that the computer would kick in and work!

On Friday, after our awesome Thanksgiving Day feast, we went and visited Chaco Canyon, which is an old Pueblo Indian ruin. What an incredible sight to see. I have to give thanks to Dan and Linda for the use of their camera for the pictures shown below. What is the one thing Michelle forgot to pack. Yep...the camera. It was left at home in Mendon in the cabinet.

The pictures below do not do the ruins justice. It really was incredible to see how they made their dwellings hundreds of years ago in the middle of the desert. I loved watching the awe Hannah was in. She has been learning a bit about the Indians in school and so she was completely amazed at where the lived and that we were walking where they walked. She was also impressed and the Pyroglyphics on the rocks. Thanks to Grandma Welker for giving her the book on Chaco Canyon. It is a treasure to her.

Here's a few of the fun sayings from the girls:

On our drive down on Wednesday, we stopped at the Hole in the Rock just outside of Moab for a sandwich. I got the girls out of the van to go to the restroom and Hannah looks at the huge rock mountain and asks, "Mom! Is that real or is it a painting?"

As we're walking in Chaco Canyon Hannah says, "I'm touching things that the Chaco Indians made. I will never wash my hands again!"

When we got to the visitor's center at Chaco Canyon, I once again took the girls to the restroom. One of the stalls in the restroom had a sign on it that said it was out of order. Ashley says, "I guess the Indians forgot to flush the toilet."

As we were walking along the trail, Ashley kept asking, "Where are the Indian footprints?" She REALLY wanted to find one.

Here's the pictures............

The next picture shows a couple of things. First is the cool dwellings in the background. Second is that Nicole could not make it to the bitter end. She crashed!

This is our nephew Jared. He is eight years old. One of the dwellings was open so you could walk through. He is showing how small the doors were that you walked through from room to room.

At one point inside the dwelling you could stand in one doorway and see through about five other doorways to the outside. All of us are standing inside the dwelling and this is Hannah and Ashley on the outside of the dwelling. It was cool to see how all of the doors lined up!