Chimney Rock National Monument and the Major Lunar Standstill

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On our vacation in July. One of the places we went to was Chimney Rock National Monument near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We didn’t know what was there but off we went.

The heart of the monument are these two rocks. I am thinking the one on the right is, Chimney Rock (I think), and the one on the left is Monument Rock. The rocks themselves are very impressive but their claim to fame is that they were an important part of an ancient lunar observatory that monitored the 18.6 year cycle of the Major Lunar Standstill. The lunar cycle is a lot more complex than the solar cycle for various reasons. When the moon reached is maximum height every 18.6 years, you could see it nestled in between the two rocks.

The last time this happened was in 2025. Rather than steal a photo to show you, here is a link by Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting Service showing a photo of the event. Below is a short video by the US Forest Service describing what the event is, how it occurs, and its importance to the various Tribes who are the descendants of the original residents.

The thinking is that Chimney Rock was originally built by Ancestral Puebloan people and then was later an outlier for Chacoan people who used the observatory for agricultural and religious purposes.

Heather getting ready.

After checking in at the Visitor Center and showing our pass we drove the road up to the parking lot at the ridge and then grabbed out hiking sticks, water, and laced out hiking shoes on.

Son Logan is ready to go.

It is a short but steep hike from the parking lot.

And then it got very steep and rocky. Watch your step. It was also hot that day.

A view back down the trail and off to one side. Beautiful vistas.

The partially reconstructed observatory. They used about two million stones to build it. All of them had to be hauled up from the valley floor by hand along with food and water for the work force. The guides said that there was some agriculture and some water from rainfall up on the ridge that they impounded by a series of dams.

Here’s the closest that we could get. Those flat rocks above the step once supported a Forest Service Fire Lookout tower that was removed in 2010. The site was opened to the public a couple years later.

So I moved off to the side and used my telephoto lens to get this view.

Valley View - Chimney Rock National Monument

You can see why this would be a great place for a fire lookout tower. You can see everywhere.

We went back down the steep rocky trail to the car and drove down into the valley.

Chimney Rock National Monument - Visitor Center

They have a small but very nice visitor center. The Forest Service partners with 26 tribes who trace ancestors to the area. They help govern the area and make sure their ancestors are honored and that their treaty rights to the area are preserved to the full extent of the law. I found the whole arrangement fascinating.

I am also fascinated by the amount of information now available. The Ancient Puebloan and Chacoan Cultures did not have a written language so the information we have is from archeological research including reinterpretation of data from past excavations. The modern ethic seems to be to limit new excavations and use old data to the maximum extent possible. They also seem to give much weight to the stories and history as told by the elders in Tribes today.

Here is some information from the Chimney Rock Interpretive Associations. And the US Forest Service also has information.

I am linking to Skywatch Friday.

Shadows from Space to the Neighborhood

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Here’s the biggest shadow I have ever photographed. The lunar eclipse earlier this week. I made the image small because otherwise it is just kind of big and blobby. (Blobby is a word here in Oklahoma, just so you know.) Did you get to see the eclipse. Did you get a non-blobby photo of it!

Here is a Lost and Found shadow. Somebody at the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area here in Tulsa had the good idea put a lost and found basket at the base of map stand at the park. I think the drilled hole shadows are cool.

And here is a trailcam photo of our backyard. That is Sadie the rescue terrier in the sun and I am in the shade behind her. Both our dogs are sun dogs. They love laying out in the heat of the day. Note the temperature, note the burnt grass. Here in Tulsa we average eleven 100+ days a year, so far we have had 22 and we have a solid 7 day forecast for over 100F temperatures coming up this week.

The mornings are cooler though so I have been taking Sadie for a walk. I love dog walking shadows.

Here’s a variation on a dog walking shadow, a picket fence shadow overlaid on a dog walking shadow. Who says I cannot do two things at the same time?

You can tell it was early. Here’s a long morning shadow of a tree in our neighborhood greenbelt.

I am linking up with Shadow Shot Sunday. Check it out!!

Saturday’s Critters – At Home and in the Woods

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A deer I found while hiking on Turkey Mountain. The deer is kind of fuzzy but the shrub in front of it is in perfect focus. That is why I call myself a picture and not a photographer.

Kodi the Pomeranian and Sadie the rescue Terrier resting together.

Earlier this month I found this rabbit on our front walk. It was very hot and I think it was thirsty so we added a water bowl in the front yard. We already a couple bowls in the backyard.

Lizzie the cat has such beautiful expressive eyes.

And a Merlin collage from a hike I took earlier this month.

We have a power line running through the greenbelt in the neighborhood. All sorts of hawks like this red tailed hawk perch up there and look for their next meal. Sorry for the fuzzy photo. It was at the far range of my camera and lens.

I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.

Visiting Pagosa Springs and the San Juan River, Colorado

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The second phase of our vacation last month, after visiting Santa Fe was going to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We had never been there and didn’t know what to expect except it seemed to be family friendly type town in the mountains.

The San Juan River runs right through the middle of town and they have made the most of it. There is a deluxe pedestrian trail along the river, the full length of town. They have quite a business most of the summer renting out innertubes to people to float on the river.

As you can see, the river was way down and there was not a whole lot of floating going on. The few souls that tried it, just paddled around the few places the river pooled up. So we didn’t even try. But hey we had a good time anyway.

We found a nice craft beer place just up the river from our motel.

We walked a ways and found a place where the water pooled up enough for some good reflection shots.

We walked the city streets. There were lots of tshirt shops and other places for visitors. We did find a couple of restaurants that were very good.

And there were some Forest Service guys staying at our hotel. Hard workers, they were long gone by 7 am when I woke up and were checking things out. I kind of miss the old green color they used to paint their trucks. But hey things change right?

It is a nice laid back town.

They had some great skies

And reflections.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Shadows -At Home and on the Trail

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Do you have a messy corner in your backyard. Surely not, it’s only us. Where we have utility boxes, stumps of cut down trees, and wheelbarrow. We have that and it has a whirlygig so here is video shadow, a fence shadow, and shadow shadows. Don’t mind the pipeline signs. They are from past employers of mine before I retired.

And a combination dog and fence shadow. Sadie likes to give the yard a good sniffing when she’s back there.

Also from the backyard. Earlier this month we had the deal we get once in a while at almost sunset and the light takes on a reddish hue. So I thought it was cool and took a photo looking up into the tree. No filter used. I use filters a lot so if I did use I would tell you, maybe.

You have heard about the miracle weight loss drug GLP 1, right? Well I am on a clinical trial for GLP 1HX. An experimental variation that makes you lose weight and get taller. It is working fabulously. I hear that is a variation of that called GLP 1HXYX. You lose weight, get taller, and younger. Let me know if you are interested. I will hook you up.

I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturdays Critters -Domestic and Wild

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Me and Sadie on the trailcam in the backyard. Her favorite game is fetch. We play it several times a day.

Deer sighted during a hike on Turkey Mountain earlier this month.

Yes, there are turkeys on Turkey Mountain.

Big Horn Sheep Sculpture on Turkey Mountain

And a bighorn sheep as well.

Lizzie the cat sitting on my lap looking at a bird through the window.

Sisters! Lizzie the Cat, and Sadie the Terrier, cheek to cheek.

A brief appearance by a sparrow.

That’s it folks. I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.

New Mexico’s Cerro Pedernal and Georgia O’Keefe

Early in July, we left Santa Fe to go to the next stop on our vacation, Pagosa Springs. On the way we passed through the town of Espanola where I was born. I was on the lookout for Cerro Pedernal. A flat topped mountain that Georgia O’Keefe painted over twenty times.

And hey we found it along with a handy oversized parking lot right off the highway. Cerro Pedernal is close to the place where I have my earliest memories. Coyote, New Mexico. A village up in the mountains where my father was the Coyote District Ranger of the Santa Fe, National Forest. I don’t remember the mountain at all. We had lots of mountains up there.

O’Keefe liked to claim that because she painted the mountain so many times, that God gave it to her and it was hers. I read a story somewhere, I can’t find it to confirm it. that she climbed the mountain once. It stands at 9866 feet above sea level. The last segment, I read, involves scrambling up a steep slope with and hand over hand climbing. So kudos to her. The trail up there is about 7 miles so I don’t think I’ll be making the trek anytime soon. Upon her death in 1986 at 98 years of age she was cremated and her ashes spread over the mountain.

Cerro Pedernal in Spanish means flint hill. The Tewa people call it Tsi Ping and it is sacred to them. There is an ancient village nearby, Tsi’pin-owinge—translating to “Village at Flaking Stone Mountain,” occupied from 1275 to 1450 AD that housed about a thousand people. They still call the mountain Tsi Ping. It was renamed by the Spanish when they explored the country and claimed it for their country and renamed everything they could. Earlier in our trip, at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, they had an exhibit of art by Tewa members. One of them was on a project to paint Tsi Ping 30 times and thus reclaim the mountain for his tribe from O’Keefe. I find this all fascinating. There seems to be a movement by indigenous Americans to reclaim their history, including place names, as a way of reestablishing and confirming their identity under their own terms.

Georgia O’Keeffe. My Front Yard, Summer, 1941. Access O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, https://access-ok.okeeffemuseum.org/object/1020. Accessed 19 August 2026

Here is one of O’Keefe’s paintings of the mountain. (You can see their entire collection online and download many of the works, subject to their terms of use at the museum web site.) It looks to be close to the same vantage point as my photographs. Both live and in the art, the mountain seems like a living being and just dominates the whole landscape.

cerro pedernal 2_DAP_Glamour blog header 3

I ran my first photo above through the Dynamic Auto Painter Program and it came out like this. No match for Georgia O’Keefe but hey, it’s mine. I cropped it to make it the new header for the blog.

We stayed for a little while and then drove on.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Finding Cool Places on the Trails

The sun is bearing down on Oklahoma hard these days. Every day is over 100F for the high and mornings are high 70’s/low 80’s. It’s brutal. It’s too warm for a dog walk in the morning especially with our little Pomeranian. I’m trying to get out early on my once or twice weekly hikes on Turkey Mountain.

Fortunately on the mountain it is very shady. And you you shadows make good photographs.

The new part of Turkey Mountain is “The Sanctuary.” It’s off by itself and has the newest trails, all single track and many of them fairly technical. You have to watch your feet is what I say.

This is one of the old landmarks on the Mountain. Everyone but me calls it the washing machine. I call it the clothes dryer cuz is what is if you look closely. But you can ignore me if you want, everyone else does, and call it what you wish.

This is the main trail to the Mountain from the lower parking lot.

I’m linking to Shadow Shot Sunday

Saturday’s Critters – Backyard Edition, Mostly

Sadie the Terrier and Kodi the Pomeranian Chewing their chews

Sadie the Terrier and Kodi the Pomeranian love their “Turkey Tenderloins.” They immediately run to a dog bed we have in the living room and get to work on them. They will do anything the treats.

From the camera feeder. Two grackles getting irritated with each other.

And Lizzy the Cat looking at me all irritated and everything.

And from earlier this summer. I rigged a trailcam up to look at the camera feeder and caught a squirrel running away with a peanut.

Mourning Dove and Grackle having a tussle

Also from May I caught the colorful plumage of a dove as a grackle chased it off. I had never seen this view of a dove before.

And from a recent hike I saw this birdhouse somebody put up. I don’t know who Evie is but I love her birdhouse.

That’s it for this week. I hope everyone is enjoying the weather. We have a had a streak of over 100F days and it is expected to continue until at least next week. I sure do enjoy reading the blog posts from Australia and New Zealand. I am really liking them describing how cold the winter is down there. I’m looking forward to our own winter.

I am linking with Saturday’s Critters

Skywatch Friday – Exploring New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument

One day while we were in Santa Fe we ventured out to Bandelier National Monument which is only about an hour or so away. It is an huge and important archeological site. It has about 33,000 acres. A clovis spear point was found at the site and was dated 12,000 years ago. The Ancestral Puebloan people moved in about 1150 AD and left about 1550. The Spanish came to the area and found it empty in 1600. Twenty three current tribes trace their ancestry back to Bandelier.

This is an overlook while still on the mesa looking out over the area.

This is Park Service photo on Flickr that I am borrowing. I didn’t take a photo of the entrance monument. What kind of blogger am I?

There are a lot of trails at Bandelier but we took the “easy” one. Hey we are flatlanders from Oklahoma what can I say.

A very nice creek, “Frijoles Creek” runs through the area. In fairly recent past it was a year round creek. Not any longer because of climate change. They do have bears apparently. At least they are grizzlies.

Tyuonyi – A Kiva built mainly for storing food. At its peak it was two stories tall and had 400 rooms.

We ascended a higher trail that took us close to the cliffs. So you can get a better view of Tyuonyi. There are lots of cave like structures called Cavetes carved out of the rock. The rock was a soft volcanic tuff that could be carved with sharp sticks or stones.

Many of the Cavetes had structures out in front of the cave. Some of them were several stories tall. You can tell where the different stories were by looking at the rows of holes drilled into the tuff. Those anchored the support beams of the roofs and floors. That also explains why some of the pictographs and petrographs are high up on the canyon wall.

As we were going on along the trail I noticed a lot of etchings on the cliff walls. I do think that they are petroglyphs carved into the rock. The more we looked, the more we saw. The volcanic rock is pretty soft so a lot of detail was missing.

We could see spirals and human type figures and a lot of other designs. They were everywhere and some appeared to be superimposed.

And we saw at least two petrographs which is where pigment is applied to the rock. It was pretty cool.

It took us about two hours to do the three mile “easy trail” we were worn out. There were other places to go that involved climbs up rickety looking ladders. So we passed. Our appetites are wetted though for more sights to see there. Maybe in the fall or spring when the weather wasn’t so hot.

More information:

Park Service Monument Web Site

Information about Adolph Bandolier who explored and studied the site and wrote a few books about it.

A blog post from National Park Traveler about visiting.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

YogisDen.us

Welcome to my world

Chimney Rock National Monument and the Major Lunar Standstill

Shadows from Space to the Neighborhood

Saturday’s Critters – At Home and in the Woods

Visiting Pagosa Springs and the San Juan River, Colorado

Shadows -At Home and on the Trail

Saturdays Critters -Domestic and Wild

New Mexico’s Cerro Pedernal and Georgia O’Keefe

Finding Cool Places on the Trails

Saturday’s Critters – Backyard Edition, Mostly

Skywatch Friday – Exploring New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument