Well, it's been quite a day. I was up early and had time to fix breakfast and then get some things at the general store. They have an interesting system, ice is free if you buy soft drinks, beer or wine, Seems reasonable to me.

I then started off for the visitor center to get tickets for the "Long House" tour, one of the largest sites in the park. I sat for a few moments studying the map to see if there were any other sites in the area I could get tickets for at the same time. When I made up my mind I started for the visitor center and got about 5 steps when I realized I had locked my keys in the car!! Luckily, I had a spare key but it was 15 miles away at the campground. I went into the visitor center and through myself on their mercy. I found out that this a common occurrence and that park rangers carry the needed tools to open locked cars with them as standard equipment. They had someone there to help me in 15 minutes and he had the car open in less than 5! Three cheers for the park service.

The Long House site was worth the aggravation. It supposedly supported a population of 150 and shows excellent craftsmanship in the stonework which was, originally, plastered. The two big questions concerning the Anasazi are 1.) why some moved into the cliff dwellings. and 2.) Why they abandoned the entire area about 1300 A.D. There is no material evidence of an invasion and displacement by another group. There was, however, a drought about that time that can be seen tin the tree ring data base. Another possibility is that they developed an extremely "clannish" culture with the resulting fragmentation preventing the united effort required for the large scale projects that make the area habitable. Yet another possibility is that they were "too successful" and ate themselves out of house and home. Resources like water, timber and arable land are in very short supply here and the culture may simply have collapsed with the survivors moving on to better locations.

Time to start heading back tomorrow. back to the world of beds, showers, TV's and Pizza.