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Boy, was I going to have a great weekend.

Mystery! Desert isolation! Anasazi ghosts! That's right, I was going to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, or CCNHP in gummintspeak. This would be great. I'd have the TiBook with me, I'd write up a great story, get famous, and live happily ever after. For years I've wanted to go to Chaco. I must have seen every documentary that's ever been made on the subject. I've read books, articles, the works. Now I lived less than 200 miles away and my truck was fully equipped for camping. Oh man.

First I had to drive to Cuba. No, really. That's Cuba, New Mexico. I was there a while back and took a great picture of a dead Cadillac in a schoolyard playground. (That deserves another "no, really" but would put me over my quota.) Starting at the dam north of Abiquiu, Highway 96 winds its way west through places like Coyote and Gallina. I dig Coyote because they get to have a "Coyote Elementary School," which would be especially cool to me if I were six years old and had just moved there from New Jersey. Pretty place, though. The village lies at the base of an astonishingly red row of cliffs. There's a coffee shop with a sign out front that says "OPEN," but I doubt it ever is. We stopped there once, several lifetimes ago. Eventually a girl appeared and started heating water for us. Very nice she was, and told stories about taking the cattle up to high mountain pastures for the summer.

I had an old "Roads of New Mexico" atlas with me. According to this, Highway 96 ran into Highway 44, that would take me to to Nageezi, from which a 19-mile dirt led to Chaco. However, I do need to get out more, as the saying goes, or at least read a few of the Santa Fe New Mexicans that pile up unread day after day except for Denise Kusel's excellent columns which I always fold back and read. (Wes Smalling's in-your-face outdoors pieces are a hoot as well.) Maybe if I read the whole paper (duh!), I'd have known that old rural Highway 44 is now Highway 550, a four-lane, 70 mph freeway through the vastness. What a surprise.

With great reluctance, I pulled out onto the new pavement and coaxed the Ford up to speed. I'd expected my approach to Chaco to involve increasing isolation, you see, not greased rails from Albuquerque to Farmington. This was more than a little off-putting, but eventually I did enjoy the way the truck flew along, tracking nice and straight with just a fingertip upon the wheel. I even passed a couple RVs from Georgia and thought I was pretty slick. This was Indian Country out here, where the towns on the map didn't seem to exist at all. Every time the slowly rising and falling roadway touched 7,000 feet, there was a sign that read, "Elevation 7,000 feet." Excellent, I thought. If I were navigating by altitude, there was no way I could get lost.

All of a sudden, there it was, my exit! Well, not an "exit" as such, just a left-hand turn against oncoming traffic, and lo and behold, a paved road leading south. Paved? Well, fine, but -- you know. And right away I saw a sign that warned the campground ahead might be full, so "have alternate plans," hahaha. They had to be kidding, I marveled. This is the desert, there are no alternatives except fleeing for your life. A ways back on Highway 96, I'd seen a sign at a low spot in the road that said "Watch for Water." I figured that meant that if anybody saw some actual water, they should hurry up and tell everyone they knew, so they could come and get some.

"Alternate plans," my you-know-what. But this did make me think, like it was supposed to. What if the campground was full? I started scanning the few oncoming cars to see if I could make out any turned-away campers. A truck with two Navajos went by. They wouldn't be camping out Chaco, they live out here, I told myself. Then after a few miles, the pavement ended and the fun began. "Dirt road" doesn't quite do it justice, I'm afraid. How does hard-packed brown talcum powder sound?

The roadbed was fairly smooth gravelled clay that I knew turned to chocolate pudding in the rain. In dry weather, the top inch or so of pounded clay produces some of the finest dust in the world -- you can spot an oncoming car miles away, just from the plume. On a road like this, having it all to yourself means everything, and for the most part I did. Then I saw an SUV with a family inside, bikes and camping gear secured on top, coming at me from the park. I tried to read their faces as they shot past to see if they were pissed or merely going home. But if they were truly homeward bound, why wait until almost sundown to leave? And if the campground was filled, did they have "alternate plans" and should I follow them?! But all I got was a faceful of dust, bleah.

In the end, it didn't matter. I reached the park entrance, drove around a long bend and spied the campground, all agleam with RVs and tents glinting in the lengthening sun. OH NO! Oh yes. So why didn't it matter? The problem, it turns out, is that visiting Chaco these days is like going to see the Liberty Bell or the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. Everybody is there, and if they're not, they soon will be. Boo, hiss.

It was all very sad, like a little ghetto in the desert. The one camping area was tiny and jammed, with no shelter or trees, each space about 15 feet from the next. I pulled into the only empty one I could find anyway, fuming and half in shock. I could hear the neighbors yelling at their kids and wondering what to have for supper. People still erecting tents were poking out adjacent campers' eyes with their poles. There were children riding plastic trikes. Fat guys in overalls lounged in chairs outside their trailers. A family in matching spotless outfits went by on bikes, pulling a baby in a little trailer. They all had helmets. The baby had a helmet. Crazy sunburned German lesbian Hikers from Hell were sleeping on a picnic table beside their rental car. Smirking college guys walked past with shoes that cost more than my tires. Giant SUVs drove round and round the circular drive, looking for an empty space or trying to escape. Egad!

I could only imagine what trying to see the ruins would be like with so many people in the park. I did, actually, and five minutes later headed back the way I'd come, miles from anywhere and only minutes before sunset. The AAA packet in the glovebox had a map that showed a public campground 30 miles up the road toward Farmington at a place called Angel Peak. That might work, I thought, and I could always tank up on coffee and just go home. Driving all the way back in the dark was preferable to communing with the spirits of the elders in the middle of all that mob, I figured, so what the hell. (I'll try again during a dry spell in the winter.)

With the bit in my teeth and the pedal to the metal, I rounded the curve heading for the park exit to find two couples in a tiny green Honda with Colorado plates creeping along right in front of me. It was getting dark, fergodssake, they were headed for the same 16+ miles of awful road that I was, so why weren't they barreling along? Oh no, I realized: they'd be in front of me on that talcum powder freeway too, where I'd never be able to pass them without my honker tires throwing a bushel of rocks back onto their windshield, plus I'd have to breathe that dust. When the Honda slowed to walking speed to cross the cattle guard, I went nuts. Just as quickly, though, I saw my chance! Dropping into first, I gunned the F-150, clanged across the guard alongside the Honda, and roared ahead into the twilight, raising a plume of dust so thick, it probably hasn't settled yet.

There's more to this story (see the pictures), but that's enough. This piece is long enough for two whole GRACKs and I don't care. I never opened up the TiBook until now, but here I am, back in Llano.

It's quieter here, prettier too, and I've got all the ghosts I need.

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr invites your emails.

Alternative eBook source:

Lots of pictures of el Norte:

Salon Weblog: yackety-yak!

(Beautiful land for sale here: "What It Is About El Rito,")

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