Ladders To Heaven

       During my stay in Santa Fe so far, I have had some delicious food. The first night we went to a place called the Zia Diner. While watching the Kentucky basketball game, I was enjoying some delicious fajitas. I finished all of the chicken in two out of the six wraps. That's why I stole some french fries from Samantha and some onion rings from Chad and ate them up before they could stop me. For dessert, I randomly picked a chocolate sundae, thinking it was going to be like any sundae. Apparently, they gave me my sundae eight minutes before I actually saw it so it was melted. When I looked inside, I saw droopy, soggy, mushy ice cream swirling around in my bowl. I didn't know what to do so I just sat and watched it melt away. Chad came over and tried to make me eat it by swirling it around and saying weird noises while singing an excerpt from the world's most worthless song, My Jeans. The second night, I had a huge country fried steak with a baked potato. Although I had great dinners, I kind of got tired of having Starbucks' cinnamon scone and hot chocolate for four mornings in a row. The fourth morning, I quickly stuffed down three pop tarts and cereal so I wouldn't have to have Starbuck's. I happened to be even hungrier a little later so yet again, we went to Starbuck's and I had the same thing. What a great variety of food for breakfast.
           On the fourth day, we went to the Bandelier National Park. We had to drive two hours to the park and two hours back. Bandelier is located right next to the Los Alamos laboratory. This laboratory was famous because one of the first nuclear bomb tests went on here. It was called project Manhattan. When we got to Bandelier, I tried to make out just one little hole from the explosion but I couldn't. When we started our hike, we came across some ancient civilizations. These included some burial circles, ladders and petroglyphs. There were a lot of caves in the cliffs where apparently some Native Americans had been living. It was really interesting. There were petroglyphs everywhere, especially big ones. There was one that was far away on a cliff and it looked like it was a seven foot long bird. There were a lot of petroglyphs of little people too. I thought the hike was so easy and pretty boring until my parents told me we were going to climb to the top of Alcove House, 140 feet above the ground.

        To get to Alcove House, we had to cross a bridge and walk a little more then half a mile to get to the base of the house. From there, we had to climb 140 feet worth of ladders. The thing that was a little nerve racking was that if a person fell, they would either suffer serious injuries or die. There were no ropes or chords or anything to break their fall. Just a huge, 140 foot drop. The first ladder went by pretty easily. Then the second ladder, the longest took a long time, but I still made it. Then there was the third ladder, almost as long as the second but not quite. I made it up there and then just one more, five step ladder to climb. I got past that and was on top. The trip going up was so exhilarating that my heart started beating at 1,000 miles per hour. Apparently, the trip going up was the easy part, the trip going down was tricky. I loved every second of my descent down the ladders. Every step and it felt like my heart started beating faster and faster until it finally felt like it was going to rip out of my chest at any moment. When we finally made it down, we took a few pictures, got our stuff, and walked away, like nothing exciting had just happened.
      While at the Bandelier National Park, there was a lot of HEI that I saw. Like I said earlier, the Native Americans needed some sort of communication. They started writing on walls and rocks to make stories and they would read them. The Native Americans also needed shelter from rain and storms. They built little houses in cliffs where they could stay. To get to the shelters, they built a ladder depending on how high up the houses were so they could enter and exit the shelter at any time. Luckily, most of the cliffs that the shelters were built into were strong enough and thick enough to hold all of that weight and not cave in. The physical features in the Bandelier National Park were unreal. There were huge cliffs with hundreds of shelters in them. The creeks that flowed through Bandelier seemed interminable. There were also myriad cacti everywhere. They were sometimes in bushels or sometimes standing straight up. The Native Americans really took advantage of these features, getting water from the creeks, alloy from the cacti, and building homes in the cliffs. The environment really affected the Native American's lifestyle and may have been the root of their survival.
                             So long for now,
                             This is Asa Hiken signing off and,
                             Stay Classy, Louisville, Kentucky