October 29 – 30, 2015 – I’ve learned again that it’s really not possible to do it all. The clever snarky text in “ROAD TRIP USA” (super useful gift – thanks R&R!) makes most everything sound fun and I thought, “Sure, we’ll do that.” In reality, we are only taking one path and lots of the good sounding stuff is just a little too far north or south, or back to the east, of where we are. Lead by our desire to see friends in Flagstaff and Taos, we set a course which lead to just a couple of days where we dipped into Utah & Colorado. We didn’t see those old standbys like Bryce or Zion, didn’t make it up to Arches, Canyonlands or Moab. But, now I get more of how this works and can stop reading when I’m able to figure out that the interesting thing is 3 hours north of our path. We picked out our key destinations and the rest fell into place or kicked out of contention. Sorry Utah & Colorado, catch you more next time, but we did see some cool stuff there…
Goosenecks and Bluff Fort, UT
We woke at Goosenecks State Park where we’d parked in the dark the previous night and we were able to see the spectacular view of the drop off below us with a snakey river that had cut through the rock creating a layered canyon. A striking view that alone would be amazing but could almost blend in among all the stunning views we’ve been seeing. With our eye toward a quick stop at Four Corners and bee lining it over to Mesa Verde National Park, we got on the road at our typical crack of 11.
But then we had one of those great road trip finds that we just had to stop and explore. Lured by a cute little town with a historic loop sign, we bumped into a place called Bluff Fort. It’s a colonial fort established in 1880 by Mormon settlers which is re-built with a dozen cabins with furniture, clothing, photographs, and household goods of the time, and many cabins play an audio recording of the residents of that cabin from their letters and writings. They also have a craft room where volunteers hand make charming old fashioned feeling items to sell in their gift shop like rag rugs and quilts. And, they have some colonial style clothes to dress up in, which of course Sophia and I did, and we had our own little photo shoot on a covered wagon. Sophia also did a kids’ scavenger hunt among the cabins and earned a little homemade sack with 3 rocks – she and I love things like that! Last, with Mark and Zachary’s patience for our stop long worn out, we left them fiddling with the truck and watched an impressively well done film re-enacting the pioneers’ 6 month 260 mile wagon trip across Utah to get there. The contrast with our travel was striking. I opted for some super yummy homemade English Toffee from their gift store and off we went.
Four Corners (CO, NM, AZ, UT)
There’s only one place where four states meet, and this is it. Four Corners is on Navajo Nation land so we paid them $5 per person to get in, parked in the dirt lot, and walked into the plaza area. It’s both very official with a Bureau of Land Management marker surrounded by four shiny plaques, state names, flags, and raised platforms, and old-fasioned with Navajo vendors in little stalls lining the monument. It was surprisingly exciting to be there, and fun to run around in circles, “I’m in Colorado, I’m in New Mexico, I’m in Arizona, I’m in Utah, no let’s go back to Colorado!” The vendors are very proud of their wares and Sophia bought a turquoise turtle necklace that she has been enjoying. Then we got fry bread from a shack in the parking lot where the woman makes them by hand and it was super yummy. One with cinnamon sugar, one with salt, one as an Indian taco, it’s hard to go wrong.
Mesa Verde National Park, CO
Finally we made it to Mesa Verde and got there just in time to hit the visitor center and then drive up their 40 minute road to the top where all of the stuff is. We tourned the Mesa Top loop which was fascinating. We learned about the evolution from pit houses to masonry multi-story cliff dwellings, from about 500-1300. They had examples of all types of the structures as we drove and stopped along the loop. It was all new to me and especially timely as Sophia is studying shelters for school. The earliest ones started in about 550 as the nomadic people decided to settle down by digging a big pit in the ground with a stick, covering the top with wood and some mud, and putting a ladder through it to get in and out – basically the structure that would come to my mind if I had to build a shelter. The structures evolved over 500 years to move vertically up out the ground, have higher and stronger walls from sticks and mud and later bricks, and eventually taller structures that reach multi-story multi-room condo-like amazing structures. Eventually, the Ancestral Puebloans moved the structures into cliffs which are reached by scaling down the rocks from their farms on top. Truly spectacular. For us, it started to rain just as we were finishing the loop at dark and we headed 30 minutes back down to the entrance of the park where the campsite is located. It was fun in the camper to eat canned soup (which the kids are super into since being at my mom’s house) as they worked on their Junior Ranger books.
It rained heavily overnight and we got up very early to head back up the hill in the fog. We arrived at the museum in time to look around, figure out the questions to the Junior Ranger book stuff we didn’t know (“olla” is the name of the pottery that women used to carry water), watch the film about the park, and buy tour tickets. Sophia got her second Jr. Ranger badge of the trip and Zachary declined with a shrug even though he’d done his book.
They have many different sites at the park, and we were going to quickly tour Spruce House but after about 70 years of people touring it and keeping watch on a large overhead rock above it, the geologists had literally closed it that week from a concern about rock stability. So, we headed to a very interesting ranger-lead tour of Balcony House. Even the kids thought it was super cool and fun. It’s a two-story masonry cliff dwelling built in the 1200s in an alcove with farmlands above. Living there would be cooler in the summer and warmer and dryer in the winter. Plus, you could just throw anything you didn’t want out the front, but try not to fall out as there’s basically no wall and it drops off into a deep canyon. Your primary staple would be corn, ground with stone which will get a little bit into your corn, so by about age 40 probably all of your teeth will be ground away too and you’ll die soon. But, the buildings looked like they would have been cozy and fun to live in and the hillside view was spectacular. Around 1300 the people abandoned the dwellings for unknown reasons and moved elsewhere. Taking their cue, we headed out at noon and headed toward Taos, NM to meet up with friends.
celngo 