Author: Easin' Along

From Moab, Utah we drove about 2 ½ hours to Cortez, Colorado in the Four Corners area.  Helen and I were very excited because we would visit Mesa Verde National Park, but we would also meet up with Paul and Dayna, longtime and dear friends from our Army days in Germany in the early 1970s who live in the area. Another couple, Rod and Sally, also from those days, was flying in to join us. We couldn’t get there fast enough.

Cortez, a city of about 8,000 residents sits at an elevation of 6,100 feet above sea level. As we drove in, clouds formed and rain, possibly show showers as well, were in the weather forecast. We managed to avoid all of that and pulled into Paul and Dayna’s driveway where Paul and Rod came out to greet us.  Paul, now a rancher, directed us to pull Lucy (trailer) over to one side of the driveway where, amazingly, he had full RV hookups, including 50 amp power and a sewer connection.  Perfect!

After getting Lucy situated, we joined Dayna and Sally in Paul and Dayna’s lovely home. Readers may remember that we introduced everyone to Rod and Sally several years ago, when we visited them at their summer home in Minnesota (link here), but we had not been with Paul and Dayna since the late 1970s. Although we managed to stay in touch over the years, the six of us had a lot of catching up to do over the next two days and our conversation lasted long into the evening.

The plan for the next day was for Helen and me to join Rod and Sally on a tour of Mesa Verde National Park. Snow fell as we drove to the Park Visitor Center to buy tour tickets and continued as we rode the bus along the face of Point Lookout to begin the tour. We passed a small herd of deer beside the road—the snow didn’t seem to bother them very much. Our tour began on a cliff overlooking the elaborate cliff dwellings on the opposite side of the canyon.

The Ancestral Pueblo people moved into this region around 600 AD and lived there for the next 700 years before scattering to New Mexico and other regions of the Four Corners around 1300 AD. The early inhabitants lived on the mesa tops in pit homes covered by a wood roof structure for around 200 years. Next, they began building above-ground homes composed of wooden poles covered in mud and plaster. By around 1150 AD, the Ancestral Puebloans began constructing elaborate stone homes in alcoves within the cliffs.  It is those homes that we came to see, and they are fascinating.

From our stops across the canyon, we had great views of several cliff dwellings that we would visit later. These structures resembled stone palaces and some extended three stories high. Some structures have one room only, and some have up to several hundred rooms and probably served as an early form of a community center. For perspective, our tour guide reminded us that the Ancestral Pueblo built the cliff dwellings around the same time as Europeans built the Cathedral at Notre Dame, and long before Europeans came to America.

The tour guide, a Park Ranger and a descendant of the Pueblo, led us down the cliff steps to the Cliff Palace, the largest and most elaborate of the Cliff Dwellings. Once there, he gave us an enlightening lecture about the life and work of the inhabitants.  Much is unknown about the people who lived there except that they farmed the mesa tops and were excellent basket weavers and potters. Most of the homes contained several families and some of the rooms were used to store grain and other food after drying.

By 1300 AD, the Ancestral Puebloans left Mesa Verde.  No one knows why, although most feel that a severe drought precipitated the move. Some believe that the Puebloans departed suddenly because of the tools, pottery, baskets, and other relics of the civilization left behind in the cliff dwellings.  Those relics and the dwellings remained largely untouched until the late 1800s when discovered by livestock farmers allowed to graze their herds on the Native American lands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually the area became the Mesa Verde National Park to preserve the Ancestral Puebloan history and culture. There are some 600 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde and 4500 archeological sites. I recommend this visit to anyone looking to increase their knowledge of prehistoric America. Our tour lasted about three hours, but time flew by and before we knew it, the time came to climb back up the cliff and return to the bus.

The rest of our trip was spent enjoying the company of our friends and visiting the charming community of Cortez.  The sky cleared and we enjoyed the lush farms and the scenery below the San Juan mountains. Paul was kind enough to take us to the Antique Corral to do some browsing.  It is so hard for Helen and me to pass up an antique store or flea market.

That afternoon, Paul gave me a tour of his ranch that included a trip down to his fish pond to feed the trout that he raises there. His dog Piper ran ahead of us and had a ball watching the fish as they chase the food tossed into the pond. Numerous photo opportunities existed all around.  Some of them are shared here.

Reluctantly, the time came to Ease Along down the road. Rod and Sally left early. Helen and I lingered for a while, the morning was so beautiful and the snow-capped mountains had us entranced. By now, we have driven over 7,000 miles on our RV trip, and this visit is the highlight so far. We send our sincere thanks to Paul and Dayna for hosting us and the huge effort they made to make us feel welcome.  Thanks also to Rod and Sally for taking the time to join us and make the experience even better.

Retirement is the best gig going — time to be Easin’ Along.

Beautiful yet fascinating is the way I would describe Arches National Park. I’ll let the pictures attempt to portray some of the beauty in this gem of a National Park located just a few miles from downtown Moab, Utah. It is the 2,000 arches and the incredible forces that created them make the rest of this story so fascinating.

As we told readers last week, we were advised to visit Arches National Park early in the day because the park is very popular and long lines of cars can form at the entrance later in the day. An early departure caused us to forgo our usual morning routine of lingering long over coffee and breakfast and drive Butch (truck) five miles to the entrance shortly after the gates opened. The lines had already formed but they were relatively short.

We waved our National Park Senior Pass at the Park Ranger and received a welcoming smile in return along with maps of the Park and the hiking trails. The Visitor Center was the first stop.  After a short wait, the doors to the theater opened and we watched a very informative documentary on the creation of the rock formations and the history of Arches National Park.

After viewing the film, Helen read through the trail maps and peppered the Rangers inside the Visitor Center with questions about what to see and where to hike. The day was cloudy and very light rain fell around us which factored into our agenda.  We decided to begin our hike at the Devil’s Garden Trailhead and hike to Landscape Arch, stopping to visit two other arches along the trail.

Despite the early start, visitors filled the trail. Approximately one-third of the way to Landscape Arch, we left the main trail and walked to two arches shown on our map.  Tunnel Arch, the first of the two, stood prominently on a hillside above the trail.  Tunnel Arch is actually two arches, one smaller than the other, sitting side-by-side. I joined other visitors and took a few pictures.

Pine Tree Arch (top of page), the other arch on this trail, is a massive rock structure and serves as a frame for some lovely scenery and the mountains beyond. Surprisingly, few people gathered around this arch and picture taking was somewhat easier. We waited for one couple to walk along and asked them to take a picture for us.

Fortunately, our visit to Arches coincided with the blooming of desert wildflowers and cactus.  Helen took quite a few pictures of the blooming plants and a few are shared here.  The purple grasses also added greatly to the incredible scenery we enjoyed.

Landscape Arch is the widest arch in the National Park at over three hundred feet wide. In 1991, a huge slab of the arch fell from the underside that measured 60 feet long, 11 feet wide, and four feet thick.  This incident adds to the history of these formations that began as sandstone deposited over three hundred million years ago and shaped by wind, water, ice and other forms of erosion over the millions of years since. All arches in the park will succumb to the forces of nature eventually and crumble to the ground while new ones begin to form. Landscape Arch is a genuine natural wonder.

Our hike continued beyond Landscape Arch to several viewing points within the park.  The signature formation in Arches is Delicate Arch, a trip that required 2 to 3 hours of hiking along a difficult trial and includes a climb up a steep rock slope. Although tempted, common sense prevailed and we decided to pass on this hike and walk to another viewpoint instead and use a telephoto lens to capture Delicate Arch. A picture below shows the rock climb at the beginning of the trail.

The hike to the Delicate Arch viewpoint allowed us to focus on the valleys and the unique terrain that makes this park so special.  The mesas, buttes, spires and balanced rocks within our view are very dramatic and seemingly endless in number. The colors found in the valley floors give details about the history and geology of each one. Iron (or a lack of it) is usually the element that determines the colors found here. Iron and iron oxide brings out the deep reds and a lack of oxygen is responsible for the greens and indicate an oxygen-poor environment such as an ancient sea bed.

The Delicate Arch viewpoint, located near the parking lot, had filled with visitors by the time we made it there, but there were plenty of vantage points available for picture-taking. Looking through the camera lens, I could see many hikers that had reached the arch and strolled through the opening in its base. I’m certain they all agreed that the reward at the end of the journey was more than worth the effort.

Both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks are exceptional and serve to reinforce my belief that our National Parks are the greatest gifts Americans ever gave to ourselves. We love every visit we’ve made to one and, when we leave here, we’re Easing Along to another one of those gifts…Mesa Verde National Park.  We hope you’ll join us there.

 

We had heard much about Moab, UT, but nothing prepared us for the real thing. The views are stunning, the town has a Wild West charm to it, and, with two of the country’s most scenic National Parks minutes away, there is plenty to do. We checked into Archview RV Resort, just a short distance from the entrance to Arches National Park, ready to take it all in. We pulled Lucy into our campsite, complete with a great view, and surrounded by off-roaders, hikers, and outdoor enthusiasts from all over the country.

After unhitching and getting Lucy settled, we drove into Moab to explore the town. We arrived in the late afternoon. Temperatures were comfortable, so we decided to stroll the sidewalks, then stop for dinner. The streets were busy, but not overly crowded…until we reached the Moab Brewery and it was if everyone had vacated the sidewalks and piled inside this place.

Knowing that crowds like this are a good sign, we decided to stay and sample the offerings. We thought we would have to eat standing up until Helen coaxed a young waitress into giving us the high sign as soon as a customer was ready to leave. She worked with us and, in less than five minutes we had great seats close to the bar. The food was good and the beer was cold—a great start to our four-night stay.

With so much to do, we asked folks in the restaurant for suggestions. As expected, both National Parks came highly recommended but, if we chose to do Arches, we should plan on starting early to avoid the long line of cars that usually formed at the entrance. Not ready for an early start just yet, we decided to visit Canyonlands first.

Helen did some map work and determined that we should take Highway 313 out of Moab and drive about 20 miles to the Island In the Sky Visitor Center.  From there, we would hike along a broad canyon rim to the Grand View Overlook with stops at several overlooks and landmarks along the way. From the moment we stepped on the trail, the views of the canyon floor, some one thousand feet below us, were breathtaking.

Mesa Arch, our first stop, is a fifty-foot span that sits about 1,200 feet above Buck Canyon. Looking through the Arch, we could get a look at the snow-capped LaSal Mountains in the distance.  The arch also provided an eye-opening view of White Rim country as shown in this picture. A second picture gives a better view of the scale, as well as evidence of the popularity of this landmark.

The trail continues along the rim and Helen and I stood spellbound by the incredible formations below us.  We passed arches, mesas, buttes, spires, and canyons. Each formation defied description so I’ll post a few pictures and hopefully readers get an idea of the amazing display.

 

 

In addition to the rock formations, we had wildflowers to admire also. Although Canyonlands usually receives only 10 inches of rain per year, there was enough this year to bring out a nice display of desert primrose to enhance the beauty of our canyon hike.  The pinion-juniper also added some color beneath several interesting formations.

 

Additional stops at Buck Canyon Overlook and Grand View Overlook were just as amazing. The pictures show remnants of old roads and trails carved into the canyon floor during the days when Native Americans, cowboys, and uranium prospectors passed through before Canyonlands became a National Park in 1964. A close look at one picture from Buck Canyon, the Colorado River is visible in the far-off distance.

Grand View Overlook, the farthest point of our hike and pictured at the top of the paged, proved to be the most spectacular. A vast canyon stretched for miles and miles into the distance and the rock formations rose from the desert looking much like red totem poles.

This over-the-top experience was incredibly fascinating and truly unforgettable. I hope you enjoy the pictures because I can’t add much more in words…Goodbye for now—we’ll be Easin’ Along.