Day: February 27, 2010

Even if the road made me a bit nervous, this is one of the best places we’ve visited. Mesa Verde is a park high up on a plateau where there are entire villages built underneath cliffs. They were built from 1200 to 1300 AD and then abandoned. It seems that the residents had to move further south.

Winter turned out to be a good time – we still go to tour one of the cliff dwellings and we saw many others from the lookouts. There were almost no other tourists there so we had a great tour and got to take lots of pictures. We also got to climb down into a Kiva, an underground ceremonial space. Kivas are circle-shaped and have an entrance plus a ventilation chute.

Our tour guide, Linda, was amazing and let us stay and take lots of pictures. She also swore Morgane in as a junior ranger.

Afterwards we had just enough time to drive the 6 mile mesa drive and see other dwellings from various lookouts and the sun temple.

I didn’t love the drive down either, but it was worth it!

We decided not to go from Zion to Bryce Canyon because of the snowy conditions. Instead, we drove south into Arizona and headed for the four corners. This is a remote area and the only spot where four states touch. At the monument you can put one hand in Arizona, one in Utah, one foot in New Mexico and the other in Colorado.

We had good weather for driving as we passed Lake Powell and the big dam, so we decided to continue on. Unfortunately it started snowing so it was a long drive to the next town. Our tires are working really well though.

We ended up sleeping in Kayenta. The entire north-east of Arizona is a Navajo Indian reservation and we found it strange that our GPS didn’t pick up any of the hotels in town.

We were glad to find that there were hotels, but the Hampton was full so we stayed at the Best Western which wasn’t as nice. We had some food from a cafe next door and the bread was something new for us – fry bread, I think it’s called.

In the morning, a lot of the snow was melting and we drove off to the four corners. We decided not to stop at Monument Valley despite Ghis’s interest – a lot of western movies were filmed there. We’d kind of seen enough red rock for awhile.

We drove past horses and not much else until we finally arrived at the four corners monument. And… it was closed. How can a monument be closed? Oh well. The guide book had described it as a big nothing anyway. So onto Colorado and to Mesa Verde we went.

It was a bit cold when we visited Zion, but we were able to drive all the way through the park whereas in the summer, only the shuttle is available.

The cliffs are so amazingly high, my eyes got tired of looking.

We saw some wild turkeys across the river and then some deer when we stopped to do the river walk. Morgane found a nice rock to climb up and slide down. The hike was flat, but we were pretty tired by the time we got back to the van.

The drive out of the park via the east entrance was exhilarating. First we started to climb and then we drove through the tunnel that was built in the 30s. There are not lights inside the tunnel, but there are holes in the walls that act like windows, letting light in.

There was a lot of snow as we drove past the petrified sand dunes and out of the park. We decided it would be better to head south to the four corners area than to visit Bryce Canyon with so much snow around.