Indian Territory

We finally got the motor home on the road about 6:00 PM on June 2nd. We headed for the San Carlos Apache Reservation where we had stayed previously at the Apache Gold Casino RV Park. Our previous visit 3-4 years ago was very favorable with a new, clean RV park with all the amenities and inexpensive too! This trip was a bit of a surprise. The RV park was full, most of the sites occupied by long term campers and construction workers with lots of extra stuff sitting on the sites, pretty junky to put it nicely. Since we had to "dry camp", we paid $2 each to use the showers and filthy would be a mild description. They obviously hadn't had a lot of maintenance or cleaning since our last visit. At least there was lots of hot water and we wore our Crocs to stay out of the mud. We felt like we still needed a shower after we finished!

It seems we have been going from one reservation to another in our drive from Gold Canyon to Santa Fe where we are this morning. Yesterday, we were in Gallup and we visited the oldest continuously inhabited city in North America. It is called Sky City and resides on top of a mesa on the Acoma Indian Reservation. The city was founded about 1100 AD and when hostile tribes began entering the area the city moved to the top of a mesa that could only be accessed by steep trails and toeholds carved in the rock which made it extremely defensible. The Spaniards were able to defeat them with their technology advantage but the city has been inhabited continuously. There are about 3800 Acomans today. There is no electricity, running water or waste treatment on the mesa. In 1959 a road was built allowing vehicles access to the top so getting water and supplies up is much easier than carrying the goods on ones back and hiking the 360 feet up. Most of the cooking is still done with wood although there was some evidence of propane. Dry farming is still being done in the fields below. It was a real interesting snapshot of a lifestyle from long ago.