Susan's Travels, Tours + Trips

ARCHEOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY ALIGN AT CHIMNEY ROCK NATIONAL MONUMENT. Chimney Rock was a sacred place, a celestial observatory and a seasonal calendar for the Ancestral Puebloans between 925 and 1125. Hundreds of prehistoric sites dot the landscape around twin spires known as Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, both contained within the 4,500-acre Chimney Rock National Monument. The pinnacles align with the summer solstice, equinoxes and Crab Nebula and, every 18.6 years, with the northern lunar standstill, when the moon appears to rise at the same location on multiple nights. Chimney Rock is thought to be the only place in the world with a geological formation that serves as a viewing platform for this phenomenon. The people who lived at Chimney Rock were here for this purpose — to study the moon and the stars and the sun and their relationship to each other.

AN ELEVATED ART COLONY IN MANCOS, COLORADO. Elevation 7,028 … population 1336. Mancos, Colorado, on the road between Durango and Mesa Verde National Park, traces its roots to the ranching, farming and timber industries of the 1870s. Today, Mancos has art galleries that represent Colorado artists and shops that offer vintage and antique American Indian art and jewelry. A short walk from the galleries is The Bauer House, built in 1889 for George Bauer, who built the town’s first store in 1881, stocking it with supplies brought in on pack mules from Durango. For information visit http://mancoscolorado.com/ and get a look at Mancos at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9tk8JRj-U.

AND REMEMBER: Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen. Louis L’Amour.

Susan Cohn is a member of the North American Travel Journalists Association, Bay Area Travel Writers, and the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association. She may be reached at susan@smdailyjournal.com. More of her stories may be found at http://ifwtwa.org/author/susan-cohn.