Monarch Ruin is your chance to explore all by yourself one of the many cliff dwellings built some 800 to 1,000 years ago by the Ancient Puebloans in the Four Corners region. It is well preserved but small enough and hard enough to get to that the experience is vastly different from the more popular Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon.

Set on southeastern Utah's Comb Ridge and named by early explorers who thought it must have been built for a king, Monarch Ruin is a jewel that is accessible by a 45-minute hike up a sloping sandstone canyon filled with cottonwoods.

Gaze up at the finely masoned walls of a dozen or so rooms and their juniper-clad ceilings. Walk in the footprints of people who lived here centuries ago. Examine tiny corn cobs from their fields and pieces of pottery they left behind. Measure your hand against the pictographs left on the wall of a protected alcove. See fingerprints left in the mortar holding the walls up. Gaze through peepholes as residents must have, watching the canyon for friends or enemies.

If you are lucky enough to be here by yourself, take your time; breathe the dry air deeply, listen for ravens and songbirds and maybe even a whisper of Kokopelli' s flute.

To get there, drive west from Bluff, Utah, about 5 miles on U.S. 163. When you see the tiny airstrip on the left, turn right. There's a gate, but it's not locked; just be sure to close it again when you drive through. This is Butler Wash Road. Go north 7 miles or so and pull off to the left (4-wheel drive is great but not necessary if the road is dry; just take it slow.)

The trail drops into Butler Wash through some thick tamarisk but then climbs easily up the slope of Comb Ridge. This is Bureau of Land Management land. There are a few signs marking the way and reminding you of the archeological heritage that surrounds you.