The Great North Road
 

For a long time I have been intrigued by The Great North Road from Chaco Canyon. This is one of many roads in the area for commerce? religion? who knows what? Some of them are elaborate and wide, over 10 meters wide at times and sometimes are lined at the edges. The roads tend to continue straight despite various barriers. Sometimes there are steps carved in rock if the road is continuing over a rock hill. I had read that many of the road discoveries were made from aircraft.

Yesterday I attended a lecture by naturalist and former Carlsbad Caverns National Park Superintendent Bill Dunmire, which I happened to think of while driving home from the airport. He mentioned Chaco Canyon during the lecture and that kind of stayed with me through the day. I had no commitments today and have an airplane in the hangar, why not zip up there and take a look.

Now Chaco is in New Mexico but it is in the opposite corner of a large state and it is a days drive up there. Much of that area is Navajo Reservation with not very many good roads. It is nice to have the airplane option. When I planned the flight I noticed that Shiprock is not much further so decided to take a look at that also.

Before even reaching Chaco I was seeing rock structures similar to Shiprock but smaller. There are many of them, mostly not named.


When I reached Chaco I got oriented from Pueblo Bonito which is the area where The Great North Road starts. Notice the recent new damage to Pueblo Bonito from a rock fall.


I think this is a section of The Great North Road, which continues this direction for 10s of miles. I decided that my RV is spectacularly unsuited for trying to follow 1,000 year old roads. An AirCam would be great, but I would still be on the way up there if I had taken one of them.



Flying west of Farmington I saw huge open pit mines, miles long and a couple of power plants fed by the mines. I also saw amazing rock.


The visibility was not very good so I did not pick out Shiprock until about 50 miles out. Shiprock is said to be the inside of a volcano after the outside eroded away over a few 10s of millions of years. Notice the radiating dikes.




I flew along the San Juan River into Farmington where I had a great refueling experience and a very scary takeoff off a mesa right over the middle of town. It looked like there were no good options if there was trouble taking off to the east.



Got home at noon for lunch in Carlsbad. Lots of amazing stuff in this state, and not just in the Guadalupe Mountains, but all over.

A short plug for your hometown:
We flew into Carlsbad a few weeks ago to visit the Caverns. KCNM's FBO treated us like royalty, Enterprise (in town) left the car at the FBO for us, no ramp fees, no parking fees, reasonable prices on self serve avgas.

Bob

Stunning pictures, I'd love to come to the US one day and do a flying trip around your beautiful country.

Cheers

Great photos Larry. I wish I would have spent more time exploring NM when I flew out there last year. I missed some wonderful scenery. Thanks

Awesome on my bucket list to fly over next summer when the 12's done/

Thanks,

Bob

As I fly over the flat middle part of the country today, I'll have envious thoughts of the flights you enjoy out west! Thanks for sharing. A fascinating area.

Larry,
Thanks for posting! Next time you are in my back yard, look me up. Most of those Volcanic plugs have names. The largest and best known is Cabezon, but the others have names. One of my coworkers flies a trike, which seems to be an ideal vehicle for local sightseeing. His tour of the Valley of Volcanoes starts about midway through this video.

http://youtu.be/zyCTluu21Do

Shiprock......
 

......Has an interesting story in Navajo lore. About a bird that crashed straight into the ground. Seen from above looking at it, the cone is the tail end of the birds body and the dikes (as Larry called them) are the wings. Have a good photo on my computer at home I'll post if I ever get off this trip I'm on now 5+ weeks and counting.

Awesome photos ...
 

... and an excellent travelog. Thanks MUCH, Larry!

Fabulous pictures, Larry...gotta add those places to the list of ones we'll visit in the RV!

Dave