Colorado so far....

We've spent a good few days resting in Colorado. We did so much driving through Utah the last few weeks that we were all totally shattered. So we booked into an RV park Country Village in Montrose to just relax for a few days. This RV park is managed or run (I highly doubt they are the owners) by the most miserable woman on the face of the earth. Dan was scared to go into the office when he needed to. She seemed totally unable of smiling, grunted a lot, was kind of put out that we wanted to stay the night as it meant she had to do some work. Her husband, on the other hand, smiles more than anyone I've ever met. What a couple. I wonder if the people who own the park realise what an awful welcome she is giving their guests.

Anyway, we spent two full days lounging around and doing nothing of any importance. I slept for most of it, waking up for the occassion bout of mild morning sickness. Jimmie found a snake on our doorstep and we all ran outside to take photos of it. I dont know how to tell which snakes are poisonous, but this one moved at the speed of lightening when it wanted to.

After two days of rest Dan was itching to do something so we headed up to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison national park. It's one of the smaller, quieter parks we've visited, and was much less grand than the likes of Zion or the Grand Canyon, but still a lovely place with amazing views of the Rockies. We stayed in the campsite there which has electric hookups. Luckily for us the camp site wasnt busy so we were able to choose a nice big level site surrounded by grass and trees. A lot of the sites were very unlevel, and I'd hate to have to park an RV here during the busier months.


We spent our first day at Black Gunnison enjoying the beautiful weather outside our RV. Dan finished reading the third book of the trip (a biography of Kurt Cobain from Nirvana) and I lay in the sun for an hour. Jimmie ran around the trees and bushes for hours, as he always does when released into the wild. Barney spent a good few hours digging RV parks into the gravel with a spade and then parking his cars in it (now a favourite game of his) and Annabelle spent most of the time reading.


The next day however we set out to explore the park. We basically just drove through the park stopping at all the lookout points. The views over the canyon were spectacular, and the kids had junior ranger questions to answer at each stop.


Today we are heading back to Utah where we will stop at Moab and the Arches national park before heading north.

Colorado

I'm so excited to finally have seen the Rockies, walked in the snow and experienced the amazing alpine mountains of Colorado. The mountain views here are everything I thought they would be. I just don't ever want to leave.

This place is such a change from all the desert regions we have visited. To start with it is cold, and today it is raining. But despite the coldness and the snow it seems usually bright and sunny. We started in Cortez, just on the border of Colorado and New Mexico and visited the Mesa Verde national park (see blog post below this one). Then we headed north along the San Juan scenic byway, through some spectacular scenery. This scenery is nothing like what we have seen so far... snow topped jagged mountains, miles upon miles of alpine forest feet deep in snow, gushing torrential rivers and mountain log cabins. I tell you, this is a place that I could live quite happily. Not far along the San Juan byway we stopped for breakfast. We drove into a little byway just by the gushing Dolores River where we sat and ate bacon sandwiches. It wasn't snowy in this region, but the river was so rapid from all the melted snow coming down from the mountains. We sat for an hour to take in the scenery, whilst the kids fashioned arrow heads from flint. They had such fun doing that.

The drive all the way to Tullaride was just so spectacular that it took us a few hours instead of just one hour, as we kept stopping so many times. We stopped at one point to let the kids play in the snow. They took out some cardboard boxes with them and used them to slide down the slopes. It was strange to be warm in the snow - we didn't need any coats, hats or gloves, as it's the spring time.

We drove on to Tullaride, a town recommended to us at the visitors centre. We had hoped to stay there over night but the town had no RV parks, so we just drove through it. Tullaride is a quaint little town set at the foot of the mountain. The houses in it are just adorable beach hut style mountain log cabins. Dan pointed out that everyone in the town was young, lol.

From Tullaride we took a few back roads to try to find some free camping that we were told about. We couldn't find the camping but the drives were worth it anyway. Eventually we arrived in a town called Ridgeway, where we spent the night in a tiny RV park called Webber's. The man who owned it let us stay at less than the advertised price, and then gave us a site with the most beautiful view over fields full of cows and horses, to a valley with a snow capped mountain in the distance. It was like something from a post card.

We have now moved on to the next town and we plan to rest here for maybe four days as we've just done so much driving lately. There are some hot springs nearby, and another national park, so we will venture out to them at some point. There are many more photos like this in the Colorado Album so do check them out.

Mesa Verde, Colorado

After re-planning our route many weeks ago, I thought that I wouldn't get to see the Rockies or visit Colorado. One of my dreams for this trip was to see both Colorado and the Rockies. This week my dream came true and we are now happily driving through a very cold Colorado.

Our first stop in Colorado was at the Mesa Verde National Park. Our of all the national parks we have visited, this has been the most expensive. We didn't have to pay the $25 entry charge as we have an 'America The Beautiful' pass that we bought at the start of our trip. At $80 for a year, it has really saved us money on tall the $20 park entries we would have had to pay. However, camping in Mesa Verde was expensive. Camping with hookups was almost $50 a night (which for a national park is phenomenal). Dry camping was $28 a night. We consider $10 a night to be about right for dry camping. Therefore we dry camped in the park for just one night.

The camp site itself was set in the forest and although we were parked on a slope (not good for sleeping without water retention) we were lucky enough to see several Mule Deer wandering around our RV throughout the evening.

The following morning we got up early to spend the day visiting the park. Mesa Verde is famous for its cliff dwellings. 800 years ago the Pueblo Indian people left the brick built cliff dwellings that are dotted across the canyon. There were as many as 600 homes built into the cliffs at the time. They Pueblo Indians lived in the area for 800 years before migrating south into New Mexico and Arizona, where they still reside today. Many of the buildings still stand, in fantastic condition after so many hundreds of years. Some of the dwellings are available to walk around, but to really appreciate the larger dwellings, we had to take a ranger tour (at a cost of $3 each). This was the first park to charge for ranger led activities.

We bought tickets for all five of us to visit the Cliff Palace, and a ticket for just Dan to visit the Balcony House dwelling. Visiting the cliff palace involved a strenuous climb down steps into the canyon, and a scary climb up three ladders fixed onto the cliff walls, in between some narrow canyons. The Indian people did not use ladders, they used toe and hand holds which were chiseled into the rock. Once into the cliff palace area we were virtually hidden from the rest of the world, in a small village with a huge window into the canyon. The ranger talked about the Pueblo people, how the buildings were made, what they were used for and many other things. Amazingly after all these years, we were still allowed to walk around the buildings, to touch things and explore. We sat and thought about what life would have been like to the people who lived there. In the summer they would have coped with extreme heat and dryness, in winter freezing snow and cold. The area would have been noisy with children and turkeys running around the place. There would have been strong smells from all the cooking (typically they ate squirrel, mouse or rabbit stew). It was a real adventure to climb down to the palace and to think about past cultures and ways of life.

After our tour of the cliff palace (which incidentally isn't actually a palace) the kids and I stopped for lunch whilst Dan took one of the scarier tours on his own. The tour into Balcony House comes with warnings about claustrophobia and vertigo. We thought it was best to let Dan go on his own. To get in and out of the dwelling he had to clamber through the tiniest man made corridor through rock (one of the larger men in the group had to lay on his side to wiggle through, and Dan actually thought he was going to get permanently wedged inside!) Then he had to climb up vertical ladders, for many feet up steep cliff edges. It certainly wasn't a tour for anyone with a fear of heights or confined spaces. Dan however, loved the tour and relished the chance to explore without the constant chatter of the kids!

At the end of the day as we drove out of the park, a wild coyote stopped in front of us in the middle of the road! We stopped the RV and stared at the coyote, as he stared back at us. We didn't get a photo, and he slowly slinked off into the woods. We were so excited to see a coyote after hearing them howl at the moon so many nights.

The Four Corners

On our long drive from Monument Valley to Colorado, we past the four corners. An area where four states join. We got there just before the site closed and so we didn't have to pay, or queue for our photos. It was a bit of a silly novelty tourist thing, but we had fun standing on the different states at the same time. The four states are Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. We took a few photos, then Dan and Luke lay across the states for some funny photos.