Miles travelled: 5645 to 5860 (total of 215 miles)
Weather: clear & sunny
Highlight of the day: Monument Valley & Mesa Verde
    
    
    Woke at 4:30 and took breakfast fixins to view sunrise over Monument Valley – awesome+++++
Woke at 4:30 and took breakfast fixins to view sunrise over Monument Valley – awesome+++++ When the gate was (finally) opened at 8:50 – the scheduled time was 6:00 (Indian time perhaps?) we did the 17 mile drive around the Monuments (spectacular sandstone forms standing on a plain). You are not allowed to approach the monuments though there is one that has a hiking trail around it. Even so you are very close to them and it is an incredible sight. We kept stopping every few hundred metres to take photos. About half way around there was a sign that said ‘Scenic Detour’. Disa commented ‘Just how much more scenic can it get?’.
Left Monument Valley at 10:20 and drove through incredible heat to Four Corners, another Navajo Nations park. This is basically an ordinary patch of desert where 4 states, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona & Utah, intersect. Disa took the obligatory photo of me with one leg in one state, the other in a different state and my hands in the other ones. We had Navajo tacos and the best iced teas for lunch then did a circuit of the surrounding stalls, all selling traditional Navajo crafts, pottery, sand paintings, jewellery etc. Disa bought me the nicest piece of pottery we found there, or anywhere else, and we had looked at plenty of places along the way.
After a brief geocaching stop in Cortez during which we saw goslings, egrets and prairie dogs (yes the cutest prairie dogs in the world), we drove to Mesa Verde. Mesa Verde is a world heritage site and an absolute gem of a place. The Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning Ancient Ones) were pueblo (village) Indians with fixed houses and agriculture (corn, squash & beans) as well as hunting / gathering who lived here from 800 AD to 1300 AD (before disappearing – famine, war with Navajo, moving on for cultural / religious reasons? Nobody knows) . This is quite different from the plains Indians of the cowboy movies of my youth (eg. Navajo, Apache) who had horses (from the Spanish) and were nomadic hunter / gatherers, following the rain and buffalo and living in movable houses (teepees). Please excuse the lecture but it is important background information to fully appreciate the photos of Mesa Verde. Anyway the Anasazi mostly lived in one storey conjoined houses but from 1200 – 1300 AD built houses into cliff caves. These houses are spectacular, up to 4 storeys . We saw one today called Spruce Tree House and it was wonderful – please refer to the photos we took.Next we went to the Anasazi museum. A beaut museum with a friendly ranger who had visited Hobart and considered Cascade the best beer he had ever had (his less discerning colleague preferred XXXX on his Australian visit). The museum covered all aspects of Anasazi culture, food, building techniques, clothing, agriculture, pottery etc. and had a storage jar of corn (with the corn as well!) that was approx 1000 years old! The friendly ranger let us stay until 15 minutes after closing time.
Disa’s Comments
Apparently the 2 day anniversary is the Breckenridge Avalanche Amber Style Ale anniversary.
Although it was 2 days worth of photos, it should be noted that Scott, famous for making a roll of film last over a decade and well past it is any good, filled the memory card in his camera today.
And not to discourage anyone from camping at Mesa Verde, which is a truly marvellous place, however the man you had to register for a camp with was truly incompetent! It still stresses me out too much to tell the tale!