Today we toured the Puye cliff dwellings on one of the nearby Indian reservation. As many as 1500 Indians once lived on the plateau (7000 feet above sea level). I don’t remember how many years ago that was, but it has been uninhabited for 400 years, so it was a long time ago. All visitors are guided thru the ruins by a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo. When the cliff dwellings were occupied, they lived in the south facing cliff dwellings in the winter. In the summer they lived in a village on top of the plateau.
After lunch we went higher (8500 feet above sea level) into the mountains and toured a National Preserve called Valles Caldera. It is an 89,000 acre super volcano; luckily it hasn’t erupted in over 50,000 years.
On the way back from Valles Caldera we stopped at one of the more scenic hiking trails in the area. It followed the headwaters of the Jemez River though a canyon carved by the ages. It had some spectacular rock formations, and also was fully forested as it had been spared by the 160,000 acre forest fire that devastated the area last year.
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