Written by Kyle
Bee and I decided to do a road trip around the Four Corners region. We figured we’d be able to see a bunch of new spots we had not yet been to and revisit a couple we had – but spend a bit more time. We cleared ourselves a four-day weekend (which happened to coincide with a bit of a heat wave for the area), and hit the road.
We left Creede and headed through Durango, CO and made our way across the Utah border to see Hovenweep National Monument.
Hovenweep National Monument preserves “six prehistoric sites built between 1200 and 1300 CE which may have served as ceremonial centers” and includes “a variety of structures, including multistory towers perched on canyon rims and balanced on boulders.
I’d been here before years ago, but Bee never had, so we decided to do the full 2 mile rim hike. From the visitor center this takes you around the end of the box Cannon, across the other rim, and down into the canyon before heading back up to the visitor center. The hike down and back out of the canyon could be a bit challenging depending on your knees, but is also completely optional. You could stay on the upper rim and still see everything, however, seeing all of the sites from the bottom of the canyon definitely offers a unique perspective!
We took our time reading through the guidebook for each of the stops, and were lucky enough to come across one of the park workers who was actually doing some restoration of mortar work on one of the buildings which was in danger of an eventual collapse. She was extremely informative and explained the whole process of preservation and their goal of just maintaining the structures, not trying to actually rebuild or add to them.
We spent about two hours at the monument which was a pretty amazing site. Is definitely hard to imagine this at the peak of its time when there were water, catchment systems, and large areas of agriculture. After a little picnic, we hit the back roads and headed off towards Moab! Stay tuned for part two of our Four Corners journey.
Ramble Around 