- [Park Employee] So Hovenweep is about an hour and a half away from us.

She's our sister park.

She's a gorgeous little park, just like we are, where a lot of our park is the canyons and the bridges with just a few ancestral Puebloan ruins to explore through the canyons.

They have a very small canyon with lots of ruins to explore through that small canyon.

(upbeat music) (birds chirping) - Our ruins are mostly known for their masonry, which is very fine.

You can kind of see in the little spaces between how they're so carefully filled in, and the adobe and the the plasters on them are really elaborate and really good.

They're also known for their location, which makes it kind of special.

Right on the rim of a canyon is pretty unusual, especially when you've got places like Mesa Verde nearby, which are more caved dwellings.

You know, they're in alcoves in the side of a wall, and they're not kind of perched up on top, like you see here.

So this is kind of considered here, at the Visitor Center in the Square Tower Group, the sort of main portion of the park.

But there are all these separate little units that all have ruins at them.

They are dirt roads that lead to them, so they often require a high-clearance vehicle.

You definitely want to check the Visitor Center on their condition before you head out there, but they have their own special feel.

And the nice thing is that they're more isolated, and so you can really go out there and have it all to yourself.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music fades) (birds chirping) I came from Canyonlands at the Island in the Sky District, which was the busiest part of the park.

And so there, at this time of year, we're getting about 2,500 people a day.

And so to come here, where we're getting 150 to 200 people a day was a big change for me, I know, and I think because a lot of our visitors too go to Mesa Verde, where you, for the most part go with a tour group, and it's a very busy park to then come here and have kind of more intimate experience with the ruins, where you can get up close to them and have that time to yourself and just sit quietly, and there's something really special about that.

(gentle music) You know, you do have to work a little bit harder to get out here to Hovenweep, but that isolation is part of the experience of the park, I think.

You can really sit out here and hear the wind and smell the sage and really just feel like that moment is unique to you.

(gentle music) It's important to know that Hoven Weep certainly has these amazing ruins, and it has this amazing human history, but it has so much more than that.

You know, it has amazing stars and really dark skies, And it has that silence, and it has that opportunity to experience something individual that makes it worth the visit.

(gentle music) (crickets chirping)