Moon House

At the start of our long road trip out to CA, the weather was auspicious, so we headed through Bears Ears National Monument to find the thousand-year-old Moon House cliff dwelling ruins.  I had called the ranger ahead of time to get the permit (not in high demand in Feb!), and knew the roads would be in good condition if we got there before the incoming storm did.  We lucked into a gorgeous day and the scenery on the way in from the east was specacular.

Trader Joe's cold toaster pastries and coffee make a good breakfast in the great outdoors.

Snow Flat Road follows the old Mormon Hole-in-the-rock emigrant trail, which we keep running into as we explore Utah.  We have the advantage of roads and signs and maps, but this would have been pretty tortured country to navigate back in the day.

Nice cryptobiotic soil.  We took care not to walk on it on our way to the canyon's edge.

The ruins require you to navigate across a steep little canyon on a goat track of a kind-of-sort-of trail. 

After navigating a couple of dead ends, we made it to the canyon bottom and admired the rocks.  

Then it was time to scale the other side of the canyon to get up to explore the ancient structures we had been getting glimpses of on the way down.

 

One of the neat things about this set of structures is that many of the rooms are sheltered by a big hallway, which one is actually allowed to carefully go into.  The hallway is painted with stripes and many small white circles, thus the modern name "Moon House". 

I am always amazed at how long the timbers stay intact in this dry climate.

 

There were neat views out to the canyon from the hallway.  Note the visible hand marks in the mud on the little pillar.  Thousand-year-old handprints, those are.

This site was a good day's exploring and we are glad to have finally made it out there.