Ha!
We were able to walk right up to this set of ruins, called 'Split-Level House Ruin', because it's sort of like a split-level house. These ruins are all over the place, and you really begin to understand that many hundreds of people lived in this canyon over a period of more than 500 years. I couldn't get good pictures of some of the higher ruins, on the tops of the cliffs, but one in particular was interesting, because it was built at the junction of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon. It faced down canyon, and opposite, much higher on the cliff was a second ruin. Our working theory is that the first ruin was the lookout---on the watch for invaders. On the top of the cliff was a fire tower, to alert all the folks upstream if they needed to retreat to the cliffs. Such a tower could also alert people if there was rain on the plateau (which would mean flashfloods down the canyon, again requiring a retreat to the cliffs). The marvelous thing about Grand Gulch is that you really begin to see how the civilization worked, and how all the ruins tie together to form a community. This is very different than anywhere else we've ever been.
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