Thursday, October 8: Archaeological Dig, Arches National Park and "Glamping"

 Thursday morning we woke up around 6:00AM so that we could finish packing and get to breakfast early. We had to leave that morning. Linda asked Katie if we could see the real archaeologists dig in the real site. We didn't have high hopes, but to our surprise, Katie talked to the site manager and she gave the thumb's up! We drove 5 minutes to the site right across the street from Crow Canyon. We walked around all the different dig sites, and to our surprise there were pottery sherds (not shards) scattered all around….even on the road. Some of the pottery sherds were corrugated (which means the pots had bumps to make the heat increase) and other pottery sherds were painted black on white. We wanted to move the pottery sherds off the road, but Katie reminded us that we had to leave the artifacts where they were found.  Something special about the desert southwest for archaeology is that some of the artifacts are on top of the ground. Sometimes archaeologist only have to dig a couple of inches to find something. At this site one of the big excavations was a Kiva. This is a site from the Pueblo II and III period.

We saw all the archaeologists go through fascinating steps of trowling out the dirt, crushing it up, then giving it to the sifters. The sifters simply put the dirt on the sifter screens and shook it hard. When you first see the dirt unsifted, you think nothing is in there. When the sifting is done,  a bunch of little sherds appear.

The adult archaeologists invited us to assist them in an actual dig!!! Maryn found some flakes from a flint-knapping project. Linda found a turkey bone and Colter found a rare pottery handle. You guys might think they put the artifacts there for us to find, but no one knew they were there.  We were the first people to touch these rare artifacts in 1000 years. Most archaeologists have to dig a long time to find anything. It's very special that we got to excavate and we were very lucky to find a couple of artifacts!!!!!

After we left Crow Canyon, we drove to Arches National Park near Moab, Utah.  The drive there was  exciting, exhilarating, spectacular and beautiful. We stopped at "The Windows" to do a little walk.  The arches were beautiful and made us feel small under the mighty rocks. We walked around and scrambled up a bit, but not too much. Linda was a little over-cautious. She didn't let us go very high. Maybe we could come back with our dad and be a little bit more risky! Even with Linda the scared-y-pants, we had good time.

A long time ago, all the arches were one big mesa. After millions and millions of years, the elements carved out the mesa into arches. The forces were wind and water erosion. We recommend anyone who likes to hike and loves nature to visit Arches National Park.

 Can you find Maryn and Colter in the photo on the above?

After we left Arches, we ventured to our overnight stop. Colter did not know where we were staying. Maryn wanted to surprise him! We turned on to a dirt road driving to where these tee-pees and big tents were. We checked in, found our tent, settled in and began to explore.   

We went to go paint pictures of the mountains and mesas. We painted for two hours. Then we went to eat dinner that we got from the market earlier that day. We ate outside of our tent.  After our delicious dinner, we went to the campfire and roasted marshmallows. On the way back to our tent we lay sprawled in the middle of the path and looked up at the constellations. We stargazed and looked for shooting stars.

The day was overwhelming in a good way. 

Colter and Maryn at Fisher Towers

The next day we went to Fisher Towers which was amazing. Colter wants to go again. The little walk we did was so beautiful. We saw lots of lizards. While walking, we heard this giant "Boom!" above our heads. Colter thought a boulder was going to fall on our heads. Linda thought it was thunder, but we had blue skies! When we looked up we didn't see anything. Suddenly a giant green and blue parachute opened up above our heads. A second later, another one boomed open. Two parachuters had jumped off of the cliffs above us. It was really cool how they weaved though the tall red rock towers. 

 Our final stop for the day was at the Dinosaur Museum in Fruita, Colorado. Maryn the vegetarian was a little nauseated seeing this.

Our last overnight stay was at Glenwood Springs Hotel. We got to swim in the hot springs.

When we arrived home on Saturday afternoon, Mom showed us this poster that she drew welcoming us home!

Our adventure was an exciting, daring, surprising, beautiful and academic trip. It's a great way to learn. I would rather do this than be stuck in a school room!

This is our last blog. We hope you enjoyed all of our posts.
From,
The Heap Twins

Wednesday's Visit to Mesa Verde National Park

To all the doubters that Colter and Maryn actually did write this blog……here is proof that it's NOT Linda doing the blog….it's US!

On Wednesday we went to Mese Verde National Park. The drive up there was beautiful with all of the super positioning and stratification. About 75% of the landscape was burned from a forest fire. When they have lightning storms, the mountains and plateaus are so high up that it is very common for lightning to strike. We then explored around and saw many kivas, pit houses, Pueblos and lots of cliff dwellings. We stopped for a fantastic picnic lunch and then continued our journey to Balcony House.

At Balcony House we had to climb a 32 foot ladder up to the cliff dwelling! It seemed to really scary at first, but the climb up was not so bad. We had to squirm through tight passageways, climb up small ladders to explore the dwelling. Halfway through our journey in the Balcony House a giant lightning storm swooped in unexpectedly. Toward the end our the tour we had to climb up this quite narrow sandstone staircase! If we fell off, it was about a 40 foot drop on either side! We had to walk up quickly so we wouldn't get caught in the rainstorm. At the top we ran to the car and jumped in!

Then we headed off towards Cliff Palace. We had to stay in the car because the lightning was too dangerous. We got a great look at Cliff Palace, but we didn't want to risk getting hit by lightning.

It was amazing to see these ancient homes. These Puebloans were very smart to build their homes in the caves for they had protection from the elements, wild animals and other tribes.

Pithouses, Pueblos and Pinion Nuts

Today’s adventures took place on and off campus.  We started in the lodge, and Katie took us to the pit house! She uncovered the doorway and led us through. We had to crouch through the doorway, but inside we could stand up straight. There was a fire pit and above the fire leaned a ladder.  The ladder led to a meter by meter hole in the ceiling. That is where the Ancestral Puebloans entered their homes. In the pithouse, we sat around the empty fire pit trying to make a fire with a bow drill. Linda and Colter created an ember, but once we picked it up, the wind from the hole in the ceiling whisked the ember away.  No fire today.

After the pithouse, we harvested Prickly Pears with Dan our other educator who is a part of the Zuni tribe. The pears tasted like a mix of kiwi and dragon fruit. Colter thought it was interesting.  Maryn thought it was amazing.

We next had Atalatal lessons next.  An Atalatal is like a dog’s Chuckit….it propels a spear toward a target. Maryn and Linda were ok at throwing it. Colter was out of this world! He hit the turkey in mid-flight! Just kidding! But he actually did hit the plastic decoy turkey on the third try. It was really cool.

Suzy is interviewing us for the Crow Canyon News Paper. 

We walked up a nearby hill to a replica little Pueblo community. It had room blocks and a tower with a little plaza in front.  This was from the Pueblo II period. Dan told us some Zuni stories and danced a traditional dance for us.

After lunch we drove to the Anasazi Cultural Center in Delores.  It was a fascinating museum. This is Maryn looking in a microscope at the museum.

 Next to the museum we hiked up a hill to Pueblo ruins called Escalante. Along the way, Dan showed us how to gather the pinion nuts. We gathered so many nuts to share with everybody.

This was the double rainbow right before the sun set at Crow Canyon.

Our evening program was with Tyson. We created stone pendants. Maryn made a seashell pendant and Linda and Colter used a stone called Jet. 

Jet is a black mineral, and we shaped it on the sandstone with water. This made little puddles. We decided to give this black paste a purpose…and you see the results in the picture below.

Hello Friends and Family!

Today we woke up after a good night's sleep. Colter talked in his sleep and dreamed about being in a cooking competition and running out of ingredients. "We need more mushrooms for the chicken dish!"yelled Chef Colter at 2:00AM.

We woke up dark and early and went to breakfast. After that Katie brought us to the classroom and we learned more about the different periods of the Ancestral Puebloans. It was neat how much we already had learned in Boulder and how much more we learned in the Crow Canyon classroom.

After lunch we went to a big room with a box of dirt. We thought we were going to play in a sand box! But it turned out to be a simulated dig for an excavation set up especially for us. We learned the tools and technique how the real archaeologists would dig. Maryn found a whole pot with no cracks. She also found some charcoal and part of a hearth. Colter found an animal bone that was used as a tool and a spear head. We both found pretty big pot sherds on the surface. We found out that we were digging in the Pueblo I time period.  See the photo below.

After our buckets got full of sand, dirt and rocks, we put it in a big screen to sift it. We shook it vigorously, and we found two pot sherds that we had missed.

As the dig went on, we found new and amazing artifacts. The coolest thing Colter found was the bone tool and the spear point. The most amazing artifact Maryn found was a unbroken corrugated pot.

The last, but definitely not the least thing that we did today was that we washed REAL artifacts that had been recently excavated. It felt magical to touch artifacts that were thousands of years old. The sensation was so beautiful to hold these special pieces of peoples' lives. Colter felt that each sherd had it's own story to tell if you listened closely. We used high-tech tools to wash the sherds…..called toothbrushes!

Dear Friends and Family,                                 October 4, 2015

We couldn't send our blog last night because our Hogan in the desert didn't have an internet connection. Go figure! So here is what we wrote last night……..

Today we left Salida and continued our adventure to Crow Canyon! We saw the color of the aspens changing and all of the beautiful mountains. We stopped in Pagosa Springs for a tailgate lunch. To our surprised we saw a little museum with a couple of old houses, a school, a library and a big shop. Most of them we got to go into. They were from the late 1800’s. Maryn played an old piano!

After lunch, we got back on the road. On the way to Cortez we listened to our new book Fablehaven! Now we are on chapter 6.  Anyway, we where so excited to be on the road and on are way. We were driving and we turned a bend and then saw the gigantic mountain called the Sleeping Ute mountain. It really looked like a sleeping person!

On the drive we made lots of observations about what we saw. Then we made inferences about those observations.  We observed gullies on the sides of the mountains. We inferred that it was from water erosion. We will do lots of observing and inferring.

When we finally got to Crow Canyon we  got to the office.  We met a woman named Dora, and she showed us the Hogan where we are going to live. There were four twin beds and a bunk bed. Maryn took the top bunk of the bunk bed, Colter and Linda pushed their twin beds together to make a two big beds so they each had a huge bed to sleep in.

The Crow Canyon campus is different than we imagined. We pictured sand dunes and tumble weeds and cactus. But actually, we are surrounded by sagebrush, pinion pines and juniper trees.  Near the campus is a vast valley with lots of canyons and hills. There is a replica of a pueblo on the next hill over. In the far distance we can see the cliffs where Mesa Verde is.

We ate a wonderful linguine dinner with spaghetti sauce and meat balls for the carnivore.  The dining hall is huge, meant to fit 60 people. We sat with vacationing archaeologist who told us about their past adventures looking for the remnants of the ancient native Americans. One lady found a skull, but she was required to stop digging out of respect to the Ancestral Puebloan culture.

After dinner we met Katie, our instructor. She gave us an introduction to Crow Canyon and the rules here. She also talked about the Mesa Verde region.

We talked with Katie about our research questions. Colter’s research question is how do the Ancestral Puebloans hunt the animals and what kind of animals.  Maryn’s question was about what kind of food did the Ancestral Puebloans eat and gather and farm.  Katie said we will lots of cool people who can help us answer our questions.

We had our own private lecture and we knew a lot of the information but we learned some new things as well.

We were laying on the bed as we listened to a story about a young Paleoindian boy who was going on a hunt. It's about what we are studying. 

This is a picture of us after breakfast this morning. It was a beautiful sunrise.

Tomorrow we are going down in the lab to dig up our own artifacts. Hopefully we’ll get something cool!

Hello Friends and Family,
This is Maryn and Colter and we are creating our very first blog. We hope you can be here with us though our writing.

Today we began our adventure heading towards southern Colorado.  We arrived at Linda's with excitement, hope and CUPCAKES! No road trip is complete without road trip food!

When we drove up to Linda's house, we were surprised to see her sitting on her driveway with thousands of bags piled hundreds of feet high. Well, actually, she had a lot of stuff that we had to squeeze into the car…..we suppose it takes a lot of packing to go on a 7-day adventure.

We started heading south towards Colorado Springs with anticipation to see what will unfold on this journey. Our first stop was at Garden of the Gods Visitor Center. When we walked in what immediately caught our eyes was life-sized vegetarian dinosaur. We named her Maryn! Next we went to see a movie about the history of the world. This fit in with the studying we have been doing so far in school!

We took a little hike around the Garden of the Gods that had huge red and white rocks that were millions of years old. We felt like little ants under giant skyscrapers! The Ancestral Rockies have been there for millions of years and are still standing tall and proud. If you looked closely, you can see birds' nests wedged in small nooks and crannies high up on the cliff tops. The red rocks, with the beautiful black and white streaks seemed to add vibrant color to our amazing landscape. We had a great picnic under these cliffs.

Our next destination was to the amazing Royal Gorge.We pulled off at the Royal Gorge welcome sign, took some pictures and pigged out on some awesome homemade rainbow cupcakes. The pictures show our frosting mustache and lipstick. As you can tell,  sometimes we have to have a silly break from all this education!

When we arrived a the parking lot, we were stunned that we couldn't see the bottom of the gorge when we first looked over the edge. Once Linda let us go a little closer to the fence, we could see a fraction of the river almost 1000 feet below.

Guess what we did next?! We rode the gondola across the gorge. All of the super positioning was amazing to see in real life. Then, as a treat, we got to zipline back across the gorge. Our feet were dangling 1000 feet above the river as we plummeted toward the other side. We felt like we were flying!
Fortunately a huge spring caught us before we hit the concrete wall on the other side.

In Salida, we had a delicious Mexican dinner. We are now writing from out hotel room before we go to bed.

Our first day was packed with excitement and joy.
From Colter and Maryn

Colter and Maryn's Acadmeic Archaeological Adventure Begins

Hello World,
This is Linda…. Colter and Maryn's teacher….and a lucky teacher at that! I'm so honored to be able to work with both kids this year. They are in sixth grade, and from this teacher's perspective, it's a wonderful year to be their educator! The year will be full of challenges, growth, excitement and fun.

In Social Studies and Science we began the year learning about the history of the earth…..on a roll of toilet paper, of course! Check out the photo. The toilet paper timeline was 280 squares long. Dinosaurs roamed the earth at about 12 squares from the end.  Maryn and Colter were surprised to discover that human beings came about 1/4 of an inch from the end of this timeline.  This gave the kids a great perspective as to how old our planet really is!

Our big study is actually beginning at the end of the timeline. We'll rewind and go back to the earlier stuff later on, but right now we are studying the Native Americans of the desert Southwest. Colter and Maryn are focusing on the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the Southwestern corner of Colorado. This brings me to why we are starting a blog……
On Saturday, October 3 we are going on a field trip! A BIG FIELD TRIP! We will be heading to the area of Colorado where the Ancestral Puebloan people lived 800 years ago.

Our week-long trip will include 5 days on the road. Each day will be packed with academic adventures sprinkled with a ton of FUN! We will stay at an archaeological site called "Crow Canyon" for four of the days. Part of the Crow Canyon experience will be a visit to our famed Mesa Verde National Park.

My goal is to have Colter and Maryn document and "publish" what happens during our journey……hence the Blogger site. I hope to have them photograph meaningful moments and write about their experiences and insights along the way. I invite you to read the blogs and comment when you wish. Your input is very valuable to these kiddos.

Thanks for your support!
Best,
Linda