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KOA RV Campground, Cortez, Colorado. Tachometer – 2251 miles

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Happy Shavuot!!!

We woke up to a cold and cloudy day. At 5:30, when my alarm went off, it was still raining, so I killed the hike plan. Bummer. Back to sleep. Heaven. It rained till about 7:30. We left the park around 10am and started a long sunless day of driving.

Our first stop, just a few mile outside the park, was Newspaper Rock. This is a rock etched with hundreds of drawings, some supposedly 2000 years old. Nobody is sure why this specific rock was so heavily petroglyphed. It was a nice 10 minute stop, including a trip to the men’s room.

We then continued south and decided on a detour through Manti-La Sal Forest. Basically we climbed up to 9000 feet and drove down. It was a nice drive because there was fresh snow on the trees and sides of mountains. We also saw deer several times along the drive.

We passed through a town called Blanding which has a nice museum and Anasazi ruins, called Edge of Cedars. The town is at the tree line, except that the trees are junipers not cedars. The museum was a good place for the kids to run around and for us to see some pottery and other handiwork. We then stepped outside for a few minutes to walk around the ruins. There was a nice underground room called a Kiva that we accessed by climbing down a ladder. Shir and Orr are starting to get the hang of it, and on the way up Shir climbed most of the ladder by herself. We had lunch at the museum parking lot.

Our next stop was the famous (for some) Four Corners “Monument”. I don’t think it is a federally designated monument but as it is on Navajo land, they turned it into a classic tourist trap with lots of stands selling t-shirts, arts and crafts, and assorted souvenirs. Die to the rain and not quite tourist season, most of the stands were closed. The monument basically is the meeting point of four states – Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. It is the only place in the US where 4 states meet in a perfect corner.

It was cold outside and raining a bit, but we did not want to miss the photo opportunity so we had the kids put on their duck uniforms (yellow rain jackets) before going out. They looked really cute all together. Check out the pictures – Paola is in Colorado, Ron in Utah, Shir in Arizona, and Orr in New Mexico.

We continued the rainy drive for another 45 minutes and reached Cortez, Colorado where we are camped for the night. It stopped raining at 8pm, but it is very cold outside, especially after we got used to a week of hot desert weather.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Mesa Verde National Park, where there are remains of ancient Indian cliff dwellings. Good night.

Hemi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Big Trip, Colorado, North America RV 2007, Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.