Road Trip, Part Four: Eastward HO!

On Wednesday morning we got up fairly early and continued our trek eastward. We had the hang of the long drives, and the miles just flowed by as we listened to audiobooks and admired the desert. We took a very short break at 4 Corners so that Carson could stand it four states at once (I didn't tell him that a new survey places it a little ways away from the marker), but it was hot, touristy and crowded, so it was a very very short break. And we headed on, pulling into Mesa Verde at about 4 p.m. We found a lovely campsite in a meadow of tall grass, and headed into the park to see a little and find out the scoop on tours etc.

I had discovered at the Grand Canyon that Carson is afraid of heights, and I also learned on this trip that he wilts in the heat. So we looked carefully at our options for tours (you can only visit the cliff dwelling on a ranger-guided tour) and looked at the photos in the book at the visitor's center. The tours include ladders, steep stairs, and even a tunnel to crawl through. Carson decided that he could handle it, and they booked us two tours for Thursday, staggered so that we would be at each at the right time of day for shade. Then we headed back to the campsite, had dinner, and went to the campfire program - which turned out to be about the stars. It was gorgeous - all the thunderstorms had cleared, the sky was crystal clear, and the Milky Way really earned its name.

Thursday it was up early again, and the drive into the park to the end of the Mesa for our tour of Cliff Palace. I don't usually like being in tours, and big crowds, but the ruins are so incredible that it's worth it. And everywhere you look, when you look across the canyons at the walls on the other side, you can see more ruins. (I think the number of cliff ruins in the 800's, and the total number of sites is in the 4,000's, if I remember right.) The ruins are remarkably well preserved (and restored), and the cliffs are just stunning. Carson managed the ladders, the slippery stone steps, the tunnel crawl, and we learned a lot from the rangers about the history of the people who had lived there.

It was another thunderstormy day (typical for summer in that area), but we were again very lucky. After the tours Carson was out of gas, so we stopped at the store/restaurant to get him a burger. Just as we sat down we looked outside and noticed it was hailing, which soon turned into a true gully-washer. By the time he'd finished his last fry, we could head back out into the fresh washed air and that amazing high desert smell of sage & wet red earth. I took one breath and wanted to move back to Santa Fe on the spot.

We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our own, then headed back to camp. One of the best parts of the trip, we agreed later, was the hour we spent at camp, sitting in the shade reading books, before I made dinner and before the other campers all started to fill in around us. The next morning we had to pack up early and head out, so we savored our last evening at Mesa Verde.