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.

 

 

Spot the Still-Feral Child

Kean and I had a good hike up a canyon at Ghost Ranch.  A party who shall remain unnamed didn't even lose a phone in the boulder field thanks to a helpful hiker.

Ornaments

Last year’s Christmas tree has been put to good use.

Step 1: use bandsaw to cut trunk into round “wood cookies”

Step 2: drill holes

Step 3: find the old snowflake generator

Step 4: make a spreadsheet with an algorithm to turn people’s names into a seed to feed into the snoflakerator and generate SVG files

Step 5: laser etch snowflakes onto wood cookies!

Holiday card prints in process

 Madly rushing to get the Christmas... er... New Years cards put together.

The Wise Man

Busy singing season

 It's holiday singing season these days, evenly mixed between informal and formal concerts in venues in and around Santa Fe.  Fa la la la la!  Chad is very patient with the schedule.

Cat adventures

 Things the cats have been up to (aside from eating sleeping cuddling wrestling etc)

Hanging out in their backpacks.

Learning to take walks

Getting into the food whenever they can.  How Arp managed to knock this off the counter without spilling any is beyond me.

Taking umbrage at the lack of wet food?  Again, a very talented move.

Adjusting to snow.  We eventually got them little coats, at the hardware store, of all places.

Taking over the firewood bucket

Mousie play.  Arp will play fetch.  And drop the mouse in less-than-ideal places.

Attacking the laser pointer.  A favorite of Charlie's.

Trying to inhabit the piano.  This is verboten.

Attacking the Christmas tree.  We've gotten lights up and nothing bad has happened, so might try some non-fragile ornaments soon.

Grooming Chad's beard.  Arp thinks this is serious business.

And they've been GROWING!  They are basically double the size they were when we got them a couple of months ago.

Starting the snow recreation season in earnest

 We got out a couple of times to really recreate in the snow this week, once to snow show out near Aspen Peak, and once to skin up the hill at the ski area to check out the early season skiing.  Yay winter!