Day 15: Anasazi Heritage Center

Today we went to the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, about 10 miles north of Cortez. This center was built when McPhee reservoir was being put in, circa 1984. As one can imagine, water is pretty precious in the high desert area of the Colorado Plateau, and they never had a way to store it in this area. So they decided to build a damn on the Dolores river ("Dolores" means "sorrow", so it is actually "the river of sorrow"). However, because this is the Mesa Verde area and just chock full of ancient (500 AD onwards) relics of native Americans, they wanted to preserve as much as they could. So the area the relics that they found prior to the completion of the damn are preserved in the visitor center. This is also the main visitor center for "The Canyon of the Ancients" which has a ton of both discovered and undiscovered relics of the native American people.

Here is Mrs. B outside of the center...

So you may wonder at the term "Anasazi" (I know I did). It turns out that it is a Navajo term for "enemy ancestors". But, as usual, someone else co-opted the term to describe the ancient Pueblo native Americans, and the term stuck. Full discussion on it here.

Inside were many artifacts of ancient Pueblo culture, and a recreation of an actual archeological dig of a Pueblo habitat.

The center is up on a knoll, and you can see The Sleeping Ute mountain range in the distance.

After that visit, it was back into Cortez for lunch at (and no, I can't make this up), "Mr. Happy's Bakery, Bar, and Grill". Food was quite good. Then we went to the Cortez Cultural Center and saw some more relics, and a really cool quilt collection.
Back at the KOA in the late afternoon, we saw the expected storm start to come in.

I had been monitoring the weather, and they had been warning for a few days that this storm was going to come in sometime Thursday night or Friday. We have decided to wait out the storm here in Cortez another day, rather than trying to travel to Gallup during the possible variable weather on Friday. Saturday's forecast looks good, so we will head down to Gallup, then on to Flagstaff for a chance at the Grand Canyon.
And I realize that blogging about food is frowned upon, I couldn't help but take a picture of the pasta bolognese we made for dinner tonight.

Oh, and by the way, did we mention that it is high up here in Cortez (6,200 ft). Check out the package stress.

Well, we are up to date on our travels. Until the next one.