Mesa Verde and Monument Valley

Preserving the Past

 

Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as a "public park" for the preservation from"injury or spoliation” of the archeological sites and "relics"of the Ancestral Pueblo people.

Today, with contemporary archeological and ethnographic tools and techniques, the park

continues to ensure the preservation and protection of important cultural resources.

Morefield Campground, inside Mesa Verde National Park, was a fabulous place to spend two nights. Each evening a herd of deer came to browse in the wildflowers surrounding our site. The campground also made a great base camp for our trip further into the park for our mid morning Cliff Palace Tour, described in the visitor center as follows:

Level of Difficulty: Strenuous. Involves a 100-foot (30 m) descent using uneven stone steps, climbing five, 8 to 10-foot (2.6-3 m] ladders, with a 100-foot (30 m) vertical climb to exit the site.

Location: Tour begins at Cliff Palace, 23 miles [37 km) from the Visitor and Research Center. Allow 1 hour driving time.

To travel down the rocky stairs and into the cliff dwelling is to step back in time and gave us the opportunity to really understand the size of the site. The craftsmanship of the architecture was amazing, with hand carved stone bricks fit together into walls rising to the rock ceiling of the sandstone alcove. Round towers and Kivas were masterfully crafted as well. The Park Rangers narrated what life may have been like for the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here.

 We visited other sites in the park including the overlook of Spruce Tree House, a hike to Step House and on top of the Mesa we toured an area called Far View Sites, where ruins of a farming community remain today. 

 

Fire Lookout at the highest point in the park gave us a 360 degree view of the Park and surrounding area. This is the site of a lookout station that is still manned daily with a ranger who is on the lookout for any sign of fire. It is a very strategic location with vistas out to the far horizon on all sides.

Monument Valley Tribal Park

We spent one night Boondocking at Mexican Hat Rock Dispersed Campground. After setting up camp we took a late afternoon forty minute drive to get to the entrance to Monument Valley Tribal Park.

 

 

Highway 163 South, near the border of Utah and Arizona, is where you will find that very iconic view of the roadway stretched out to Monument Valley in the distance that was popularized in the movie Forest Gump. The afternoon thunder clouds made it all the more dramatic. And just like all the other tourists we stopped at the view points to stand in the roadway and take pictures!

After the Forest Gump Viewpoint, additional pullouts along the highway gave access to stop and enjoy stunning vistas.  However we needed to keep going in order to get to the 17 mile dirt road  that winds through the various 400 to 1000 ft tall towering rock formations within the Tribal Park. This dirt road is on Navajo reservation land and requires an entrance fee and we would need to exit the park by 8:00 pm, just after sunset. We took our own truck in to enjoy the bumpy offroad experience of driving near the buttes and towering rock formations.  There is also a tour you can take through the park if you don't want to drive your own vehicle. There are about a dozen places to pull over, park and enjoy the views!

 

This description from the Monument Valley website so accurately sums up our experience in Monument Valley!

The landscape overwhelms, not just by its beauty but also by its size. The fragile pinnacles of rock are surrounded by miles of mesas and buttes, shrubs and trees, and windblown sand, all comprising the magnificent colors of the valley. All of this harmoniously combines to make Monument Valley a truly wondrous experience. Enjoy this beautiful land.

 

 

 

We truly did enjoy it! The next day we again drove down past Monument Valley, this time with the trailer in tow. We stopped at the  Goulding's Museum and Trading Post restaurant for breakfast and also visited the museum, which had local history and artifacts. There was also a "movie room" which shared the history of movies filmed on location in Monument Valley. From the classic 1939 John Ford western film Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, through more recent films like Back to the Future 3, and Forest Gump, the Park has deep ties with the movie industry! Director John Ford was a pioneer in the art of filming on location and directed nine movies in this iconic western landscape!

Flash Flood Warnings

Our drive from Monument Valley on  to Williams, AZ was impacted by flash flooding, a 45 minute delay while traffic sat on the road with runoff rising on either side of us, until the lane for oncoming traffic was completely inundated with water. No one was coming the other way and we weren't going anywhere!

When we finally began moving again, we traveled only a short distance down the road to the area where a lot of mud and debris had been swept across the roadway in the flash flood. This was why traffic had been stopped! The debris filled water had risen too high over the roadway for vehicles to continue. Thankfully it appeared that no vehicles had been seriously impacted or damaged and we were all able to move on.

After continuing a short distance further down the road we entered a thunderstorm that dropped a torrent of rain. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the deluge, and our visibility was only a few feet ahead. We had to continue to move forward though or risk being rear ended. There was no place to get off the highway. The downpour was short lived and we soon had sunny skies again. All in all it was a very intense travel day, but we arrived safely to our campground in Williams for the night!

Family Visit in Camp Verde

After a restful night in Williams, we headed on to visit our son Brent and daughter-in-law Abbie and two grand daughters in the Camp Verde area of Arizona.

We enjoyed spending time together as a family  for several days, with our trailer parked in their driveway. Hannah and Ava always seem to enjoy our time together, although it takes a little while for Ava to get comfortable with us. Hannah is still a ball of energy at all times. Ava loves to do whatever her big sister does, like taking off her shoes and wearing them on her hands, while walking barefoot on the gravelly roadway! Hannah is a caring big sister and watches out for "Baby", as she calls Ava! They both love knocking on our trailer door in the morning for a visit to “Papa's house,” their little knocks in the early morning being much better than any alarm clock!

 

               

 

In the afternoon we took a stroll with the girls and Brent. (Unfortunately Abbie was at work.)  A short distance from the house the weather suddenly changed with a strong wind blowing ominous dark clouds in, which would bring heavy rains for a short time and then move on. This Monsoon rain greeted us each afternoon of  our visit.

 

 

 

STORM'S A COMING!

Once the wind started Brent would get us moving into the house where we could watch the storm and stay dry. It was a fun change from our Southern California weather!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOME SAFELY!

 

We are so thankful that the Lord has brought us home with no troubles! We have again really enjoyed this opportunity to be on the road for an extended trip. We have seen great places, connected with great friends and family, and met some wonderful people. We have so many memories to treasure from our 2022 Summer Adventures on the Road!

 

Here is a short recap:

7,750 Miles driven

Approximately 650 gallons of fuel

87 Days of adventures

9 Western States and Alberta, Canada visited

9 National Parks, 1 Tribal Park, and 5 Canadian National Parks explored

Countless Freeways, Highways, Byways, Parkways and trails traveled

 

Value: PRICELESS

 

 

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, And He delights in his way.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭37:3-5, 23‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Colorado-Mining Country

• Telluride 
• Ridgeway
• Ouray
• Durango

What do these towns have in common? These are some small historic mining towns in the southwestern part of Colorado that we visited.

Telluride is now an internationally known ski resort in the winter months and a quaint popular western town in the summer. We spent one night in Telluride and two nights in Ridgeway, another small mining town. 

From Ridgeway we took a day trip to visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a small, fairly unvisited park surrounding the steepest and narrowest canyon in the nation. 

This graphic below shows some silhouettes on the cliff face pictured on the right that gave scale to the vast wall of rock!

 

We moved on to Ouray, where Steve had reserved a campsite in Amphitheater Campground for one night and we had plans to look for dispersed camping for a couple of nights after that. 

We arrived at Amphitheater Campground just prior to an afternoon thunder storm and quickly headed to our site. A hairpin turn just before our booked site proved to be quite the challenge to navigate with the trailer, but Steve managed to get us through to our site.

Upon investigating we discovered that the 1/2 mile spur road from the highway to the campground is limited to a combined vehicle length of 35 feet. Our truck and trailer are closer to 50 feet long! 

And as it turned out our size rig was not supposed to drive that hairpin turn to the site we had booked online. We were unaware of that. The site was long enough for us and we had booked the site online. Clearly the Forest Service website was unclear about vehicle size restrictions and allowed us to book a site in a campground we should not have even driven to!

I think the Lord wanted us in this site though, in order to meet two young ladies from Denver who were tent camping in the site next to us. Leah shared that she wants to become a yoga instructor and she is totally into the yoga philosophy that each person is a part of the cosmic energy. Her traveling friend Chris simply said she is a Catholic. Neither of them really understood who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches. We were able to talk about Christianity and the importance of knowing Jesus, and Steve and I shared our testimonies. We are praying for them to ponder what we discussed. We left them with a Gospel of John booklet and CCFR church website invitation card, so we are praying they will read it and tune into a service online sometime soon. We know God’s Word is powerful to change hearts!

The next morning our camp hosts, Steve and Dave, were able to put us into a first-come first-served site that became available for a few nights, in the “large rig” area.The two of them helped us navigate the narrow windy roads we weren’t supposed to be on in the small-vehicle area. I felt like we were a camel going through the eye of a needle! Passing a truck and some trees we had only inches to spare! But we got settled into our new site where we were able to stay for several nights. The picture of the town below is Ouray and was taken from a viewpoint at our campground.

We learned so much of the history of the area on our visit to the Ouray County Historical Museum, housed in the original Ouray Miner’s Hospital built in 1887. They had so many well documented artifacts from the local residents whose families had lived here for decades.

Million Dollar Highway, State Route 550, is a two lane curvy roadway built to connect the towns in this silver and gold mining area of Colorado. The roadway was pioneered in 1881 by Otto Mears, who also developed the railroad which brought ore out of the mountains and down to Durango.

We drove the road for a day trip from Ouray to Silverton to enjoy the drive without pulling the trailer, and to scout out what is was like before taking our trailer through that route. The road hugs the mountain side with sheer drop offs with no guard rails, but it has a slow speed limit and had wide lanes on the switchbacks. The views are phenomenal!

 

 

We arrived in Silverton in time to watch the Durango - Silveron Narrow Gauge RR arrive with a load of tourists from Durango. Suddenly the small historic town of Silverton was very crowded! We enjoyed looking at the historic buildings and had a delicious lunch of Pizza and Salad. 

 

 

 

 

 

The high point of the spectacular, 80 mile section of US 550 through the San Juan Mountains is 11,018 foot Red Mountain Pass, named after the colorful, mineralized peaks that rise above the east side of the highway.

Red Mountain Mining District was the site of a historic silver boom from 1882 to 1893. An overlook on the highway gave a view of mine shafts, tailings and decaying wooden trestles and head structures, and a row of miner’s houses, marking a few of the many mines which produced millions of dollars of silver, and smaller amounts of copper, gold, lead and zinc.

The drive with the trailer from Ouray down to Durango on the Highway went smoothly! We took a break to enjoy a coffee shop, walk around town, and visit a Train museum at the depot in Durango. We then continued our drive to our next campground in Mesa Verde National Park.

 

 

 

In our next blog we will relate some adventures in Mesa Verde National Park and Monument Valley Tribal Park as we head south through Colorado on our way to Arizona!

 

Thanks so much for following our blog and for praying for our safety and health during our Adventures on the Road.