Off Roading: Kia Style

My Kia Spectra at the Sand Canyon South trail head.

Following breakfast and a quick photo walk around the property on my first morning at Kelly Place, I hopped into my car and made my way over to the Sand Canyon South trail head for a morning of hiking.

The trail head is less than a mile up the road from Kelly Place and so close that I drove right past it as I wasn't expecting it so soon. In fact, I was looking at some interesting butte formations on the opposite side of the road, wondering if there we ruins over there as well. It appeared to be private land on that side of the road, but in all honesty, it would be somewhat hard to believe that there wasn't something ancient over there. The whole Four Corners area is so loaded with Ancestral Puebloan ruins (as well as those from other cultures) that I've heard "you can't throw a stone in any direction without hitting something." Often times it may be a small relatively uninteresting structure, but they are everywhere!

After a slight detour up the road and back, I arrived at the Sand Canyon trail head and while this photo insinuates a rough ride in, this parking area is right off the main road. At most, my little Kia only had to survive about 20 feet of driving on solid bedrock to arrive at this location.

The Sand Canyon Trail is part of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, one of the country's newest National Parks, which was designated to preserve and protect the highest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States. Over 6,000 distinct structures have been identified within the 164,000 acres of the monument and Sand Canyon contains a number of well preserved cliff dwellings. Spurs in the trail take you right to the base of a handful of these dwellings and many others can be seen in alcoves on the other, inaccessible, side of the canyon.

Images of the dwellings to come shortly...

Sue's Ruin in the Morning Light

Sue's Ruin in the morning light.

Here's another view of the reconstructed pueblo, known as Sue's Ruin, on the Kelly Place property. Sue's Ruin is just one of the many remnants of the Ancestral Puebloans that can be found on a quick walk around the main lodge.

The pueblo, named after the property's original owner's wife, was in use between about 980 and 1225 AD and spans two distinct construction styles, Pueblo II and Pueblo III. The Kellys first excavated this 13 room pueblo and its kiva in the 1960s but back filled it once they were done to prevent further deterioration of the fragile walls. The pueblo and kiva were again excavated in 1988 and stabilized with the help of trained archaeologists.

While this image makes the pueblo look rather small, it's a trick of perspective. From this angle, the back side of the pueblo, only the very top of the reconstructed walls stick out above the tall grasses along the ridge of a hill. The pueblo, and its kiva, is actually large enough to house several families.

Sue's Ruin provided an excellent subject for me while I stayed at Kelly Place. It's accessible (only a couple hundred feet from the main lodge), photogenic and just plain interesting. I've got a number of interesting images to share just of this small part of my trip, and many of the others show the pueblo's true size much better, but next up is Sand Canyon Trail. If I don't keep these posts at least somewhat in chronological order, it's going to quickly turn into a mess of confusion for me.

Granary & Kelly Place

Ancestral Puebloan Granary on the Kelly Place property.

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Disclaimer: In the interest of honesty and openness, I have to say that the good folks at Kelly Place offered me a 2 night stay in exchange for using some of the information found on my Dad's website. That being said, if I hadn't enjoyed the stay, I would only mention "I stayed here" and that's it. But Marc and Jerene really have a great place set up there just outside of Cortez, especially for visitors interested in the Ancestral Puebloan culture that dominated the Four Corners region hundreds of years ago. 

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OK now that that's out of the way, I recently had a chance to make a return visit to Cortez, Co. This visit was roughly my second and half visit to the Cortez area and it was a wonderful trip. My first visit came around the time when I was six as I accompanied my dad on his move from Syracuse, NY to Los Angeles, Calif. Being the smart guy that he is, Dad knew he couldn't keep a growing 6 year old cooped up in the car for a full 5 days of hard driving so he planned numerous stops for us. One of those stops was Mesa Verde National Park. It was that stop that really entranced both of us in the culture from hundreds of years ago that left reminders of their presence scattered across the landscape. This visit ultimately led dozens upon dozens of follow up visits to the Four Corners area, 3 books (2 as co-authors), my dad's website (anasaziadventure.com) and Dad eventually moving to the area to lead tours around many of the National Parks and Monuments in the area. In other words, it was a rather significant point in both our lives.

Despite numerous trips with Dad back to the Southwest, I didn't manage another visit to Cortez until about 5 years ago and even then, it was only about a half day visit. That's where the "half" of "...my second and half visit..." comes from. When I was moving from Buffalo to San Diego, Dad was living in Cortez and working on his initial book about the region's ancient culture. The quick visit and short timeline to get to San Diego didn't allow for a trip up the road to Mesa Verde even though it was tantalizingly close.

In late spring of this year, Dad was contacted by the folks at Kelly Place requesting the use of his Sand Canyon Trail Guide, which remained unfinished after a hard drive crash a couple years ago. Marc offered Dad a couple nights stay at Kelly Place to help him get the guide finished up. I got to be the lucky beneficiary of Dad moving overseas not long ago and jumped at the chance. I even booked an extra night in one of the campsites Kelly Place offers on their property. Since the drive from San Diego to Cortez takes about 13 hours, the extra night was really worth it. It gave me a chance to spend a day hiking and photographing along the Sand Canyon Trail and a full day to visit Mesa Verde again, 25 years after I first fell in love with the park.


I've never stayed in a Bed & Breakfast before (I was just never high class enough until recently), but if Kelly Place is an indication for how they all are, I can't wait to stay in more! Good breakfasts, nice room to stay in and friendly folks to chat with when I wasn't out with the camera. What more could you want? PLUS, on their property, there's a reconstructed pueblo, the granary high on the cliff wall as seen in the photos that accompany this post, ruins of another pueblo under excavation, a trail that runs through the property to over 25 documented historic culture site and allows easy access to Sand Canyon in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. In other words, if you're looking for a great and unique place to stay in the Four Corners area, I highly recommend Kelly Place!

A closer look at the ruins of the granary.

Granaries like this one are pretty common throughout the Southwest. They provided a safe place to store a pueblo's harvest for the winter ahead without worrying about rodents and other animals getting fat off the villagers' hard work. Take a look at the image above, just below the modern buildings in the background, there's a corner of a reconstructed pueblo sticking up through the grass. (It's difficult to see at the size image I have here in the blog, but as always you can click the image to see a larger version of the image where it'll be easier to see.) I've got plenty more images of this pueblo, known as Sue's Ruin, to share but I'll get to those in good time. It is likely that the granary shown on the cliff face in these images was built by the same folks who built Sue's Ruin and utilized it as their pantry.

I've got a ton more to come from this trip, so stay tuned!