“Something Awesome to Reveal to You”

    And so, occasional and constant reader, we have kept something from you. For some days we have felt that our trip is coming to a completion. We have seen almost all the things we came to see. The others are so cold and will be for far too long that our pipes will freeze if we attempt. Also our homestead is calling us. I see it in my minds eye often. There is much to be done and my hands are finally getting itching to create more than words and memories. The thought to go home came to both of us at the same time independently and so we started to plan our return.

       We sit now in Cheyenne, two days away from home. We left Moab 2 days ago, traveled north and east to Grand Junction Colorado and then north to route 80 and east to here. It has been the trip of a lifetime and a part of me wants it to go on forever, but another part of me is ready to return.

    This may be the last entry, but who knows what can happen in 2 days- I also will add a number of videos when I have strong enough internet to post them.

Here are the details I never included in the blog, but feel full disclosure is in order:

1. Dusty did come out of a Utah desert trail with so much red dust that some one thought she was a small Irish Setter.

2. I did hit a Wal-Mart light pole in Texas going 2 mph and put a small hole in the RV.

3. We did run into a blizzard going over the Wyoming mountains yesterday and wondered if we would need to stay for a week there.

4. We did consider the root beer float a complete meal.

5. Dusty has learned to “roll-over”.

6. Chocolate ice cream did save our marriage at least one time.

7. Our blog has been viewed 1048 times from the following countries: United States, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, Russia, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia, Belarus, United Arab Emirates, and Australia.

8. I did wear the same shirt for 4 days.

9. I will not be changing the Blog title to "Three months on the road."

9. We have fed ‘people food’ to Dusty so much, (a scrambled egg many mornings) that she has learned to use a knife and fork and eat at the table, she is now working on chopsticks.

10. And yes, I did bring my table saw with me and completed 2 kitchens, a dining room table, and 3 end tables.

Colorado River Rafting

  The first day in Moab we went to the visitor’s center, a place I remembered from 20 years ago. A place still was a wealth of info. We wandered separately and I had the thought to ask of rafting in the area. I spoke to a woman who told me of the wonderful opportunities on the Colorado River. I brought the 3 pamphlets, very excited at the prospects to Sandy. I found her, a look of terror on her face as see watched a video of people in a raft in churning white water, the waves turning the boat over and humans smashing around waves and rocks. Well, maybe not the best time to suggest a river trip. I enlisted the aid of the host of the visitor’s center to assure her that this would not be our trip. Lets just say that it was some hours before we decided to entertain the possibility.

       We left Moab at 8:45am, up the canyon, past our campsite, some 35 miles. After a humorous safety check we put in, Sandy and I and the guide in the large raft and 4 college girls in 2 blow up duckies with us. The country side there was open, a cliff of rock along the river on one side and miles of desert on the other ending in mountains, some snow capped, some Arches type red rock crashing into the air in amazing shapes. I wondered about the pace, whether I would be bored, the river is dead flat and we sped on at a rousing 3 miles an hour. But it was wonderful. We were immersed in the sights. We floated slowly down the beauty not flying past us as in the vehicle. there was time to stare and forget to stare. Then there were the rapids, nothing life threatening, but enough to get your blood moving, the boat sometimes heading into the air and fingers gripping ropes to stay in. 8 rapids in all, they were spaced so one had time to relax and enjoy the quietude before the excitement started again.

      We spent the whole day on the river. The lunch was great, on a beach, a huge spread of food, enjoyed with no civilization in sight. The rock closed in at the end of the trip, those cliffs towering above us. 

Arches National Park

     We were here 20 years ago, to Moab and the surrounding parks. Of course the first thing we did was to look for is the home made root beer they made in Moab.

     Arches is a marvel. The geology is one of a kind in our world. After the steep, steep switch backed climb up the cliff we pass through two giant rocks and another world opens up. The easiest way to describe is that we have gone back to the age of the dinosaurs. Wide expanse of open country, seeing a hundred miles in places and giant monuments of rock rising up hundreds of feet into the air. Some are massive structures miles wide, towering over us, some skinny towers and everything in between.

    We are not up a minute and I pull over, drawn by the sight of the tops of fascinating rocks. A short steep walk to an overlook and I am overwhelmed by the sight. It is so grand, so powerful  and real, I can hardly breathe. Not since the top of a vista in Big Bend, (Sotol) have I felt such power and expansion.

        On both sides in front of us massive lines of rock march along for 2 miles.  The two lines angled in converging together to form a triangle of flatness. A gap at the point in front of us, a hundred yard wide showed more monster rock beyond. On the right line of rock this massive structure is topped with thin plates of rock and stand impossibly 60 feet wide and a hundred high. They look 5 feet thick. At first these details are not appreciated. The first effect is simply gut. I can’t explain why this scene is so powerful. (At the end of our visit, we returned to this spot, I wanted to see if I felt the same. We had seen amazing formations, but that same feeling returned. I would like to live there.)

      Its hard to describe what we saw in Arches, maybe the pictures will give some tiny clue. Truly, you will have to see for yourself. 27 miles of road every turn of the road, every hill over taken and we see another miracle. Some places were thick with rock, hundreds of spires rising up in points, others with waves of fabric like rock sticking up like sheets on a line, only half buried. Other places lone and collections of towers rose, some out of the dirt and some atop huge bases of stone.

      Then there were the arches. Worn by wind and water, the soft rock falls away and forms the most amazing windows in the sky. A few we could see far away from the road, but most we had to work for, walking deep into the rising and falling desert passed wonderful formations in there own right, to come on the space of blue sky, the reddish brown rock all around it. Some seemed delicate and some would last another thousand years. I climbed to one and stood in the center, the rock above my head 50 feet. Suddenly I became terrified and had to move. My intellect told me it was hundreds of years before the arch could fall, but I could not stay.

      We went to Sand Dune Arch on the recommendation of a ranger. I asked for a place where the trail was rock close on both sides. This place was all that and more. Hundreds of children. We walked in through tight rock walls, winding this way and that and then it opened up to a room with many small side shoots of trails and a large hill of sand rose up to massive rock with a small arch as an entrance to the other half of the room. Here, unplanned was a multitude of playing children. Some running, some rolling, all screaming with delight. I could see older children on rock ledges off higher in the rock. The parents stood by in awe, unexpected daycare at their feet.

    These sights still in our heads we drove back to our campsite. There is nowhere in this area you can get away from the beauty. The 6 mile drive to our site is up an amazing canyon with 1000 foot cliffs on either side, the Colorado river splashing beside us the whole way up. Our site is 30 feet from the water.

Mesa Verde

Unexpected Weather in Colorado

The Ride Up

A Man and his Navigator

First Glimpse

Cliff Palace

Kiva

Cliff Palace

The Trail out of Cliff Palace

Soda Canyon

Remains of a Pit House on the Mesa

Cliff Dwelling Viewed during 70 mph winds

   Sleep, (a relative term with the powerful winds all night), in the driveway of a friend of a friend, 7 miles outside the entrance of Mesa Verde. We wake and think about the day. A peek out the window and we watch the thick snow blizzarding past. Why did we leave Fairfield?

      Mesa Verde is a whole adventure in itself. It’s hard to think that all that has happened started this morning. The most magical day yet in all our time gone.

      We started with a breakfast at a local café- the Absolute Bakery, Mancos, Colorado. A combination of strange looking locals, and tourists thrown into a crowded bookstore.

      As we drove those 7 miles to the entrance of the park, there appears a monumental mountain with steep rock cliffs rising up, it appears, a mile or two into the air. That’s okay, seen that before, but that diagonal line across halfway up, what’s that? That we find is the road to Mesa Verde. We start at 6,200 feet. The first part of the climb is phenomenal. It climbs and climbs and you think it can’t go any higher. Snow covered mountains appear in the distance, canyons fall beneath us, hairpin turn after hairpin turn are turned and still the road goes up. Then it goes over a pass and we face south and we can see for a hundred miles it seems. Deep canyons running off forever and we turn and follow a ridge atop it all and miles later we are still twisting and turning as high as it seems possible. Then we plunge into a valley and then through a long, long tunnel and then the slow climb again, up and up and up. As high as we were before we follow more ridges and over pass after pass and with each pass another amazing valley falls down in front of us. It was like the road had gone insane, lost its mind and just taken off in all directions. Finally, after 15 miles of this, Sandy’s armrests have deep permanent fingernail holes in them, we come to a building. We are at the highest point (8040 feet) and the most amazing view of a canyon falls in front of us. Well, the ruins are still 13 miles ahead, but we look at artifacts at the visitors center and then start driving again. Here the road seems to have gathered its marbles somewhat and gently rolls down a thousand feet to our first destination, Cliff Palace. From the very edge of a 2 thousand foot rock cliff, we descend an ancient set of steps, switched backed many times until a flat path. This trail, we are told is the original the ancients used to get to their dwelling. Turning the corner the sight is breathtaking. It is like a fairy tale. The rock cave fills our vision, the top is curved and a hundred feet across. From there to the flat bottom of the cave are rock walls, built into many, many rooms. Some square, some round, some flat, some curved. Some walls have logs sticking out in a line to indicate an interior floor/ceiling. Some rooms stick out further and some are set back. But the walls fill the opening this way or that, giving an animated feel to the sight.

     We walk in, there are courtyards in places, in others, a Kiva is forward. It is a dream to see it. Both Sandy and I have waited decades to see this sight. Both of us, in grammar school, have seen pictures of this particular place and wanted to visit.

      As the day goes on we see the whole. Mesa Verde, is a huge area man populated from 600 AD. First living on the mesa above, in pit houses, which grew in complicity until about 1100 when they started to build these amazing rock homes into the side of the cliffs. From one vantage point on the opposite canyon rim, we see half a dozen dwellings built into the East wall. There are over 500 know sites of ruins in the area. They don’t know why they moved to the cliffs- protection? And from what? We see evidence of beautiful craftsmanship in rugs and baskets and pottery. The culture was advanced here and the masonry was complex. Then in 1275, everyone took off. Again they don’t know why, but the ancestors live nearby south in New Mexico and West in Arizona. There are stories in the oral tradition about these dwellings still today.

       It is a long day of walking and climbing and finally we need to leave. The long drive back is amazing again and finally we are back in civilization again. Here we learn it will snow tonight and be too cold for our rig. We head north and settle in for a long evening drive toward Moab, Utah. The drive is at first boring; the flat fields rolling north finally giving in to giant red rock jutting into the sky in fantastic geology, until the sun sets over western mountains. We sleep in Moab.

Chaco Canyon

   It has been an amazing day of getting a whole picture of what life was like from 850 to 1250AD. We have visited a dozen villages and Pueblos in the canyon, done a long ranger led talk and stood silently in many intact rooms, one with an original ceiling. The picture I get is that this whole canyon floor, many miles long and quarter of a mile wide was once a center of commerce and home to thousands of Native Americans at a time. A few hundred villages, with as many as 25 rooms each were settled here. Other huge structures, such as Pueblo Bonita were centers for administration, commerce and justice. People from hundreds of miles away were linked by culture and belief with these people and they traded with people as far away as Mexico. They were craftsmen of astounding abilities in areas of masonry and stone fashioning, and pottery. They farmed and created weapons with flint. They communicated with languages- 3 distinct languages are know to have been spoken as different as German is from Japanese. And there art was beautiful and expressive.

     Pueblo Bonita was the first in our visit and to me the most impressive. There is one area of rooms very much intact and walking from room to room is quite a trip. The doorways are small, but there is a feeling there of liveliness and purpose. The buildings are 3 and 4 stories high and the walls are flat and true and works of art themselves. There the stones are thin and long and flat on the outside. I found myself staring at the artistry in the masonry as much as at the building as a whole. The courtyard in Bonita has a different feel than the rooms. I had the pleasure of walking it all alone. I walked from one end to the other and just relaxed and cleared my mind. I swear I could feel others close. Open, with kivas nearby, and a view of the whole valley, it seemed a place of social friendliness and exchange. I know that I am reading into my experience, but the feel is very different than a walk through the deep woods or near a raging waterfall. There is an inspiration here, in the courtyard or deep in the rooms. We are new and they were old and we have gathered so much knowledge in the thousand years since they lived here, but I truly believe they had/have much to teach us if they could.

     At a nearby Great House, a mile from Bonita, we found another set of walls, 3 or 4 stories high and smaller. The masonry was different but beautiful. I found a small trail that led up the side of the cliff. It was impossibly straight up but I followed the dozens of switchbacks and then disappeared straight into the rock. A crack between a million tons of rock allowed passage up the cliff and to the top of the mesa. From there I had another view of the village below. There was a magic to its geometry. I hope the photo I took gives some element to what I saw. This trail, I found later, was an ancient trail that the native people used to get to the top of the mesa and I am sure that many stood and stared, at the beauty, looked for friends or enemies, or took off traveling from this vantage point to the north.

   We leave today, heading for Mesa Verde, a sister place of the Chacoians. I have feel a deeper spirit here than anywhere. I will reflect on this place much. 

Abiquiu

   Leaving Pecos, we drove north, looking for beauty while it warms up and we can visit Chaco, where it is too cold now. The wind picked up and we headed for the area where Georgia O’Keefe lived and painted much of her life. We hoped we would find a park, nothing in any of our books. There were times when the RV was pushed 3 feet to the side by the wind. Finally we heard of a federal park on the Abiquiu Reservoir. As we climbed the hill we expected flat land with a parking lot for camping. We crested the hill and a view that I would think I would see at the Grand Canyon appeared. Far in the distance, all the way around the huge water, were carved cliffs in the side of the mountains of red, white, light and dark green rock with trees higher and lower leading up to the water. Only the park host was there and had just showed up an hour ago. The park wasn’t open for weeks, so he couldn’t take our money and a few sites even had electric. We chose the miracle site, on a cliff over looking the red rock at our feet and dropping a hundred feet to the water with Padernal Mountain to our left. This is the Mountain at O’Keefe’s front door, which she painted often. Ghost Ranch, her compound, is just up the road.

      We stayed 2 nights at Abiquiu, cold, but not the 14 we heard was at Chaco. (We made the right decision.) The road from Abiquiu to Chaco is a blessing and a curse. The first half is across some of the most beautiful country we have seen. Mountains and hills of a dozen colors, one hill side was steep and worn and red with rock and dust, but it was also dotted with so many green cedar trees that the effect was almost another color. This road ended and so did the stunning beauty. It flattened out and rode on for another hour. Finally we found the road to Chaco. After 8 miles of pavement, the dirt road started. We had heard of the 13 miles of wash-boarded road and at first it was not too bad. It was a long hour of between 5 and 35 mph we reached the national park.