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a coyote walking along the road
These first pics are of Mesa Verde, Colorado, a place where you can see awesome cliff dwellings that were constructed in the 1200s:
Here's a cool looking butte just past the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park:
a coyote walking along the road
One of the cliff dwellings at Balcony House
Another view of the house...
Notice the long wooden pole coming out. It had some religious significance that I cannot remember, but was also used for parents to hang up their toddlers so they didn't walk off the side of the 500 foot balcony this village was built on. These buildings date from 1200-1300.
Here's what's called a kiva. It had lots of uses: in the summer, it was often used for religious services. Since these were 8-10 feet in the ground, they would stay a constant 50 degrees in the winter (these are about 7000 feet up, so Colorado winter is COLD outside). These were typically covered by a roof.
You can see an air vent on the left side. Right in the middle you can see where fires were done. The block in the way of the bottom of the vent is used to keep sudden gusts of wind from coming down the vent and feeding the fire all at once. There are also 6 sets of (short) stone pillars in each kiva, representing the 6 directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down.
Really cool view of the valley from Balcony House.
Here's the beginning of the Cliff House area, probably the most spectacular part of Mesa Verde National Park. Once again, these structures date from 1200-1300 AD.
Another pic of the Cliff House area:
Notice all the kivas.
Four-story buildings in AD 1200???
What makes this really amazing was the Anasazis who built these had no metal tools. All the stone used for these was carved using stone tools, so it must have been backbreaking work.
Square Tower house, viewed from a cliff about 300 above. This is the tallest ruin in Mesa Verde. This is a different tower from the previous pics.
I don't know the name of this one. This pic was taken from the other side of the canyon:
These cliff houses are ALL OVER THE PLACE in Mesa Verde. Most of the pics I have of them are from the other sides of canyons though, and aren't that clear, so I won't post them.
What's crazy is everyone had to move out of this area by AD 1300. There was a nasty mini ice age that hit about that time, and they also completely destroyed the soil above that they used for crops. Supposedly the area above these was a huge dust bowl by 1300. Sad to see all this effort was only good for about 3 generations of people.
I thought this was a cool pic from the road in Arizona:
I'll post a few more in a minute... hold up
Nice photos! I've always wanted to go to Mesa Verde.
Went to Vegas too, but I didn't take many pictures on this memory card. I'll check the other one later and post anything interesting I might have...
Here's the new bridge being built by Hoover Dam. The pic does no justice to how massive this thing is.
Here's the Bellagio water show, viewed from the Eiffel Tower at Paris.
I couldn't take pics in the shows. I saw Bette Midler (great show) and Penn & Teller (amazing). Not only is Penn & Teller's show spectacular (I don't want to give away any of their tricks, because it's a must-see in Vegas), but they come out and talk with every single person who goes to their show. Seriously, every single person gets an autograph, a photo, and a chance to shoot the with Penn Gillette and Teller. Forget James Brown, these two guys are the hardest-working men in show business.
Went out to San Francisco. I didn't think I was going to like it alot, but after having been there it is by far my favorite city I have ever seen. The area I was in (Lombard Street) is like going back in a time-warp to the 1940s. Lots of great restaurants, pubs, delis, breakfast joints, laundries, groceries, etc within a block or two. The city seemed like a bunch of small neighborhoods, and you could walk from one end to the other in a couple of hours.
Here's a shot of downtown (I think) from the the bay, just north of Lombard:
The Transamerica Pyramid with a cool church in the foreground. I took this from the top of a double-decker bus.
Chinatown. This kind of reminds me of Mexico, as everything is negotiable in every store. Picked up a nice mah-jong set down here after haggling for a while.
I thought this was a cool building in Chinatown:
San Francisco City Hall
Beautiful homes.. can't remember the name of the neighborhood.
I thought this was a pretty cool building in hippy-town
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