December 29, 2010
Chaco Culture National Historical Park

After leaving Abiquiu Lake, we went to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. There's about a 16-mile (25 km) dirt road to the park from US-550, and sections of it were rather muddy after the recent rains. We had unhooked our Jeep Liberty, which we usually tow when moving from one camp to the next, so that Jan could drive it behind me and the RV to try to keep the Jeep from getting covered with splattered mud. At one point, my rear wheels tried to catch up with the front wheels while going through some slick mud, and J was rather alarmed. Fortunately, I was able to get the RV straightened out again and kept it out of the ditch. We were greatly relieved to reach the park and paved roads!

After settling in at the campground, we went over to the Visitor Center to pick up a map and talk with the ranger.

We explored the area around the ruins of the Una Vida "great house." There were some nice stone walls leftover from the multi-storied public building, but I was more interested in the petroglyphs on the nearby cliff wall (above). I used my Canon TS-E 90mm f2.8 tit/shift lens because the petroglyphs were quite high on the rocks. By using the shift motion, I was able to "look up" at the petroglyphs without tilting the camera up too much in order to minimize keystoning. I also used a polarizer to remove unwanted reflections from the rock.