What Is Pueblo Bonito And Chaco Canyon And Where Are They?
When most people think of impressive ancient structures or “ruins” they tend to think of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Mesa Verde is one of the most well known places in the US with a large concentration of ancient dwellings that are easily accessible and easy to visit. The park rangers offer tours through some of them.
Chaco Canyon on the other hand is much less well known, is much more remote and if often considered the center of the ancient world. The structures at Chaco Canyon are FAR more impressive than those at Mesa Verde. Some like Pueblo Bonito in this photo are MASSIVE. Due to the remote location of Chaco Canyon, the increased difficulty in getting there and staying there and the much lower profile of Chaco has in the national park system, Chaco doesn’t draw anywhere near the crowds the Mesa Verde does.
Chaco Canyon is located in New Mexico with the nearest “real” town being Farmington, New Mexico about 75 miles away. Google maps pegs the drive at about 72 miles and thinks you can get there in about 90 minutes. A chunk of the last 20 miles to Chaco are rough dirt roads that are not well maintained and may be impassable when it has rained recently or there is melting snow on the roadway.
What Is It Like To Travel To Pueblo Bonito At Chaco Canyon?
As noted above, Chaco Canyon is a remote place in rural New Mexico about 70 miles from the town of Farmington. The closest airport to fly into the Chaco Canyon area is probably the Durango, Colorado airport about 100 miles away. If you want to fly into a larger airport, the Albuquerque, New Mexico airport would probably be your best choice about 150 miles away.
Flying in to go to Chaco Canyon is a real challenge. The challenge comes once you fly in. To really enjoy Chaco Canyon and not have to spend all your time driving you need to camp at the park. If you don’t drive you could spend 4-6 hours driving back and forth to the park each day depending on where you stay and the road conditions. If the road conditions are bad you may not be able to get there at all and you may get stuck there until the roads dry out and miss your flight back.
Given all that, Chaco Canyon is really best visited as part of a flexible road trip. Due to weather and road conditions, no matter how you go there flexibility is key. You’ll probably want to have a fairly high clearance vehicle with 4WD. You may not need it and you may be able to drive an RV there (some people do) but you never know. To avoid lengthy drives back and forth each day your best bet is to stay in the small campground there.
If you stay at the campground you’ll want to fill up your gas tank before you head in at whatever the last gas station is on the way in. You’ll need to bring in all your food and everything else you’ll need to stay for a night or a week or however long you plant to stay there. It’s a good idea to bring a couple extra days of food in case you get stuck there due to bad road conditions.
Once you get to the campground you wont’ have to do much driving. There is a loop road through the park that is about 9 miles long. Once you get into the park you won’t have to do much driving but you will do some.
What Does It Take To Get A Wall Art Quality Photo Of Pueblo Bonito At Chaco Canyon?
If you get the travel and camping lodging challenges solved in order to go to Chaco Canyon, you’ll have better photos of Chaco Canyon than most people. Most people will never get to go to Chaco Canyon to get any photos.
Since the bulk of the photo opportunities at Chaco Canyon, the lighting doesn’t make a whole lot of difference but sunrise and sunset can be good depending on where you are shooting.
The challenge when it comes to photographing Pueblo Bonito is its size. From the ground level and within the structure you can get some partial photos of Pueblo Bonito. Those photos can be pretty cool with some creativity. If you wan to photograph the entire structure you’ll need to hike up above Pueblo Bonito. You’ll need to hike all the way up there just to see the whole thing at once.
Once you are up there you’ll discover that even a really wide angle lens may have a tough time photographing the whole thing because it is so wide. What is the solution to that? Get ready to haul your panoramic photo gear to the top of the trail that goes up above Pueblo Bonito. Even if you can get the whole structure in one regular photo, chances are that when you crop the photo, the piece of the file you have left will be small, not blow up well and not generate a nice pint.
If you want to get a real wall art quality photo print of Pueblo Bonito, you’ll want to take a tripod with a panoramic head up above the area, shoot multiple frames across one or more rows and then stitch them together. If you have a camera with a decent sized sensor and you stitch at least 6 frames together without just enough overlap to stitch well, you’ll end up with a pretty good file. If you can zoom in and cram more shots into the scene you’ll be able to get an even better file for prints.
There are plenty of other places at Chaco where you don’t need to to carry a panoramic setup with you to get a good shot and come away with a file that can make pretty big prints but Pueblo Bonito is one where you will want to shoot stitched panoramas.
What Is The Best Gear For Photographing Pueblo Bonito At Chaco Canyon?
If you want to get a high quality photo of ALL or Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, you’ll need to take your panoramic gear to Chaco Canyon and then you will need to haul it up on the trail that goes to the overlook above Pueblo Bonito. If you are shooting Canon, most any Canon 5D Mark II and up will work. If you have a Canon 5DS or the 5DS-R, you’ll come away with an absolutely massive file if you stitch many together.
When shooting from the overlook above this massive structure, you can probably shoot your stitched panoramic shots with a 50mm lens or even a 70-200mm lens. I mount the 5D and the lens on a large carbon Induro tripod and use a heavy duty Nodal Ninja panoramic head. When shooting panoramic shots you don’t want to use any polarizer on the lens. You may want to use a cable release with a 2 second timer on the camera to make sure all the photos you are stitching together are nice and sharp.
For photographing other things in the Chaco Canyon area, a regular DSLR or mirrorless camera with a standard 24mm-105mm lens can be a good all around lens. There will be some areas that will be better suited for a wider angle lens and some rock art sections that will be better photographed with lenses that are 200mm or longer.
Accessories including circular polarizers and a cable release can help create deeper blue skies, more vibrant colors and sharper photos.
What Is The Story Behind This Photo Print Of Pueblo Bonito At Chaco Canyon?
When I first started on the national park road tripping adventure on 2010 I’d never heard of Chaco Canyon. It was a number of years later that I heard something about it an a bit after that that I actually saw any photos from Chaco Canyon. A number of park rangers at some of the smaller ruins sites absolutely RAVED about Chaco. If you like Mesa Verde (which I thought was just so-so) you will LOVE Chaco Canyon.
Finally in the spring of 2017 I was in the area and decided to make an effort to get to Chaco Canyon. Up in Farmington, NM I loaded up on food, some water and everything else I thought I might need if I was isolated or stuck somewhere for up to a couple weeks.
After I called Chaco, checked the road conditions report and was convinced it would be relatively easy to get there, I departed Farmington with a full tank of gas and plenty of supplies and headed to Chaco. The paved roads were as good as any paved roads anywhere. The dirt road parts were in most cases better than House Rock Valley Road that you take down to Buckskin Gulch or The Wave In Coyote Buttes North both in Northern Arizona.
I got to Chaco fairly late in the afternoon and was able to grab a campsite. As is often the case, once I actually slow down and get a place to sleep in a unique or comfortable area I end up staying longer than planned. I don’t remember if the campground was reservations only at this point. I did have to switch campsites a few times over about 5 nights there but the campground host was able to find a campsite for me the whole time I was there.
While at Chaco the first stop aside from the campground was the visitor center. There I picked up the park map and other info and started planning my hikes and photos in Chaco Canyon. By this time I’d been using a panoramic setup for a number of years and was really glad I had that gear after scoping out the sights and the landscape at Chaco.
The first full day there, I did some hiking, drive the 9 mile loop around the park, took some photos and scoped out numerous others. I hiked up to the overlook above Pueblo Bonito without the full array of camera gear. After seeing the MASSIVE structure that is Pueblo Bonito it was obvious that this would require a panoramic setup to do it justice.
After the sun started to fade on the first day and the access gate to the road closed, I hopped back in the car and headed back to the campsite. It was a fairly long day, I got a bit sunburnt and was ready to head off to bed. After some Beefaroni out of the can and some Pop-Tarts for desert, I sat around and gazed up at the dark skies for a while, crawled into the tent and soon drifted off to sleep.
The next day I did some more hikes, drove the loop road, packed up the panoramic camera gear and set off to hike to the Pueblo Bonito overlook. The skies were a little cloudy and the lighting wasn’t spectacular but I’m not sure that it would ever be spectacular give the angle I was shooting from and the complexity of the scene in front of me.
Bright sunlight would probably result in some really high contrast areas between areas in shadow and areas in direct bright sunlight. Partly cloudy skies helped to even out the light a bit, make it easier to stitch the photos together and create a pretty even light across the entire structure.
Back in the day, it is estimated that Pueblo Bonito had between 600 and 800 rooms, hence the reason it is sometimes referred to as on of the “Great Houses”. After a few panoramic shots from the Pueblo Bonito overlook, I lounged around for a bit, hiked back down and wandered through this “Great House” a bit. It is the only structure like this I’ve found where it is possible to wander around through it on our own without a guide or a permit other than that general park admission.
If you can pull off a trip to Chaco Canyon National Historic Park and you have an interested in this ancient “Great Houses”, it is well worth the trouble to get there. Even if you don’t have much of an interest in these structures you may develop one after a visit to Chaco Canyon!
What Formats Is This Pueblo Bonito Chaco Canyon Panoramic Wall Art Print Available?
This historic panoramic print of the Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon is available on paper, canvas, metal, acrylic and wood. It is available in massive sizes up to 108×27 inches if ordered on paper or canvas, 96×24 on wood or acrylic and 84×21 on metal. Since the file is so large, other similar dimensions could probably be created from the original file.
If this print will be hung in an area with diffused lighting, then any material with any finish will look great. Matte prints on paper or canvas will have a softer more classic look while those with more reflective glossy or metallic surface will have a brighter more vibrant look. If you’ll be hanging the print in an area with bright direct light then a paper or canvas print with a matte finish will look best and not reflect the bright lights or surrounding room furnishings.
If you’ll be decorating a bathroom, a portion of this image can be printed on a high quality shower curtain and paired with matching bath towels that can show off more of this large panoramic photo. If it is a bedroom or living room that could use an ancient touch, a Sherpa fleece blanket with a portion of the image looks great and can be paired with one or more throw pillows withe the same image or another one from Chaco Canyon.
If you need something to replace the plastic shopping bags vanishing across the country, you might go with a super sturdy canvas tote bag. A variety of sizes are available, some even big enough to work as beach bags. If you’ve got a new Apple or Samsung cel phone, this image can be printed on a sturdy new case for the phone you have.
Finally, you can pick a section of the image to be printed on a 500 or 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. These make great holiday gifts and sometimes sell out around the holidays due to high demand.
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