Mesa Verde National Park

I wanted to see this place last year but we were forced to drive by as the timing was wrong. That happens when you’re a traveler and you have places to go, but this year was the occasion for my first visit to this park, the scene of Nevada Barr’s first novel in the National Parks mystery series. 

I found Mesa Verde to be slightly off kilter which was funny. We met just one parks employee and that was at the entrance and she was exactly right for the job cheerful and informative and who waved us on our way into a park devoid of visible employees. After that stop  the entire park was ours, shared with just a few hundred other civilian tourists. 

The campground at Morefield is run by a concession in the park and at $38 a night for dry camping (no hook ups) we preferred our free wild camp 15 minutes from Mesa Verde. However $2:50 each for a long hot shower we could afford and thoroughly enjoyed. 

The national park is a strange place with lots of road and not much to see, which sounds odd but bear with me. There was an overlook but it faced the wrong way so we drove a bit further and found a pull out and made that our spot for lunch with a view, which view was I think is Montezuma Canyon but it wasn’t labeled so I am giving it an inspired guess. 

That overlook, the one facing the wrong way overlooking a uniform high desert plain, was also annoyingly built at an angle so that wasn’t going to work either  for us even just to park GANNET2. Layne is very tolerant of tilted parking but this was too much. Our muffuletta sandwiches made by Layne, would have slid off the plate such was the angle. The overlook did have a pit toilet (which served as a dump station for us on the way out) and there was a trash can which was nice as we always have garbage to dump, but we didn’t stop there on our way into the park.  So we stopped here, narrow but level: 

With some nature out the sliding door it wasn’t a bad spot. 

Making do in Mesa Verde National Park! Some other cars also stopped briefly to look out over the spectacular canyon invisible from the overlook. 

Here’s some actual scenery out by the cliff dwellings miles from the entrance. A canyon offered a scenic view at last:

Mesa Verde exists to protect the cliff pueblos left by the local residents of a thousand years ago. The shortest tour takes I think five hours and we were pondering our options for such a long tour  but even from a distance the buildings show masonry ability. There is a kennel in the park but we have forgotten to get Rusty’s kennel cough vaccination which is usually s requirement and he doesn’t have a county ID tag  as he has no home county… so no tour this visit. 

Apparently after living and farming on the surface the ancient residents  went to living below the rim in villages of many sizes where the largest community consisted of 150 rooms, beautifully built too. My telephoto lens helps make up for the lack of touring up close. These buildings can be seen online too obviously. 

It seems the Anasazi (“Old enemies” in Navajo apparently) arrived around 600 AD and they moved under the cliffs in 1100 and disappeared from the area around 1300 for reasons unknown. That’s the story, been there did that and vanished. It is highly unsatisfactory as one wants to know more obviously and there is nothing to know. 

We saw more people and more cars in the park than we have seen for days camping in the wilderness and dropping into small towns.  I enjoy these walks through park attractions as everyone else seems as pleased as I am to be there. 

Up above is the remains of a forest fire. There have been a few in the park and they are all labeled with a name and a date. 

And there it is, Mesa Verde, a long drive across the mesa to ponder how people managed to thrive living such constricted lives. If you think you might fancy cliff house dwelling imagine how you might do in a Manhattan walk up. All I could think was how did they walk their dogs?

Once you’ve seen the cliff houses it’s 15 miles back to the entrance at 25 miles an hour. It’s a pleasant drive but the scenery is mediocre oddly enough when you compare it to the world outside the park, full of canyons, buttes, buttresses and wilderness. Mess Verde looked like a quiet well run plateau of scrubby piñon trees to be found anywhere across the southwest. 

It’s not ugly but it’s an odd circular drive lacking visual drama. Maybe  I should have looked harder but I couldn’t see anything beyond the pueblos and I suppose they were enough. 

And here’s how they lived before they took to the cliffs: 

When they arrived in the area the cliff dwellers started out living in pit houses part underground, like this: 

I liked the kid playing with the dog and I was quite surprised to imagine dogs might have lived indoors. I like these people. 

Repaving causes traffic jams. I had pulled over plenty of times to let them by in their fast cars and here they were again! I’m glad the park is maintaining the roads so there were no complaints from me about the delay. I like smooth pavement.  

Well that’s another park visited. I think I need to come back in the Fall  and take the tour, or press on to South America. Next time I’ll need to see the cliff dwellings up close. 

Cortez

After the desert and the monuments and the canyons and the dirt roads, life went back to pavement and making tracks. We had plans to camp outside Cortez Colorado for the night, 90 minutes from the Valley of the Gods. And Layne had a date with some Mexican food which was more than my life is worth to miss. 

iOverlander, the traveler’s app opens some interesting doors from time to time and some appear to be unbelievable. Free water at a Christian mission? Go pound sand liar! 

You know how you feel optimistically stupid when you are going to ask for a favor you just know isn’t going to be granted. We had about nine gallons in our thirty gallon water tank so with more wild camping ahead it was time for a refill, and that maybe was why I pushed myself to test out the theory that there was free water for the taking! 

I saw a notice saying there is a weekly food bank here and addiction counseling too every Thursday. Oh and free water 7 am to 7pm. Well I’ll be…I guess iOverlander wasn’t lying after all. 

I saw no one and heard no one. We took our twenty odd gallons in a few minutes and loaded Rusty back up and took off. No donation box, nothing, and I’d have left some money had they suggested it. That water faucet was a lovely gesture.  

Smart tiny housing too. I’d rather see homeless in tiny houses than cluttering up the sidewalks staring off into space unemployable and unapproachable but I’m pretty much alone in that theory of better living. Seeing these homes at the mission awoke my curiosity but not enough to go knock on a door to ask intrusive questions about the homes.   

We were back  on the road in ten minutes with just a little bit more of a hurry pushing us. Layne had found a Mexican market in Cortez with interesting food and the trouble was it closed at five and Google Maps said we’d get there at 4:40 Mountain Daylight Time. No dawdling then in our 9300 pound heffalump.  

Legal dope! Yay! Except I don’t touch the stuff as it puts me to sleep and doesn’t taste as good as alcohol. More important to us was the presence of high altitude wild camping on public land. Hot summer air in the valley becomes cool sleeping weather at 8,000 feet. A different kind of high. 

Cortez is an okay little town with all the usual useful services. We got the Mexican food to go which turned out later to be  not quite as good as the reviews promised, and then we did laundry. See? Van life is like being a starving student again using public facilities and hanging out in parking lots. It’s not as romantic as some people pretend but I enjoy being a nomad.  I feel care free on the road and as I joked to another camper at the laundromat the best thing is I don’t have to fix the machines when they break. Then the wind blasted town rocking GANNET2 while I tried to put my laundry away. No washing machines  to fix but for a few minutes it looked like my home was going to be whirled away to the land of Oz in a tornado.  

We found our spot out of town on public land with the thunder head chasing us out of Cortez which was where we finally ate the rather peculiar Mexican stewed meat flavored with cinnamon. Then the rain started and hammered our little tin box. We went to bed listening to the rain and Rusty started snoring first. It had been a long day. 

The Valley Of The Gods

I enjoyed driving the Valley of the  Gods in southern Utah far more than the much more controlled and organized drive around Monument Valley. 

I grant you the natural sculptures in Monument Valley are more varied and spectacular but this place has its own charm.  

Not least because once again it’s BLM land and the Bureau of Land Management is a hands off Federal agency when it comes to coddling visitors. There are signs warning that messing with the monuments will lead to prosecution, despite the warning law enforcement does exist here I believe the reason this place is so pristine  is because each of us who visits appreciates how unusual and rare this place is.  

There are two entrances to the valley and each entrance has a pit toilet. Facilities? You want facilities? This is BLM so manage yourself. Get in the dirt at the bottom of the Dugway or turn off the paved road coming from Cortez and you have two hours of gentle dirt driving with lots of dirt pullouts, no signs other than those banning fires or fireworks. This place is all yours. 

Flat gray stone cleaned by floods in the wash: 

Imagine spending a night here, not in summer perhaps and being alone by the side of the road. It’s on my list, here and Muley Point wild camping.  

Don’t be an ass and drive where you’re not wanted, let the stones gently remind you to stay on the track. I hope they never need chains and padlocks here. 

I really enjoyed this drive through the rocks, stopping as we wanted unbothered by anyone. 17 miles of extraordinary views.  

President Obama included this place in the Bears Ears national monument and the next year President Trump was lobbied by the uranium industry to reopen the area so he did. So far so good here though other areas are being opened to mining and grazing. 

We stopped here for lunch, a casual turnout with a pleasant cool breeze blowing up the valley and tucked into Layne’s tuna salad wraps. 

After lunch Rusty and I went for a walk as you do.  It was hot, there was no shade and the silence was a blanket over the trail. 

Most of the road was easy driving but there were some deep arroyos we climbed into and out of, and some of the washes flooded the dirt away. This road is said to be near impassable when soaked as the mud is slick and they apparently close the gates sometimes. 

This butte is supposed to be a sitting chicken: 

This is pure art: 

And this is where the dirt road meets US 163. Turn left to Cortez Colorado; turn right to Bluff Utah. 

Up and out…

…and back to reality. Road works and slow downs on the highway. Good job as they are improving the road way.