April 21-23, 2024
We left Taos for a long day of driving. We climbed into some of the mountains – over 10,000 and saw snow on both sides of the road. Spent the night in Mancos State Park in Colorado – over 6,000 feet, so the generator was a no start. Thank goodness we had propane for some heat and for the cooktop. We did a walk around the beautiful reservoir.
The next morning we headed to Mesa Verde National Park, also a World Heritage Site. As we approached the park, I could see a mesa ahead of us, but it was SO high up that I couldn’t possibly believe that was where we were headed, but indeed it was. Hundreds of years ago, how did people get up to these places?
We learned a lot about the Ancestral Pueblo People, about how they built homes and villages in the cliffs with sandstone, making a mortar of dirt and water. They planted the “three Sisters” – beans, corn and squash, and hunted on the land. They built kivas – round, in ground rooms that were the community gathering locations for the leaders. They were artistic in the pottery and baskets that they made and were resourceful in making tools and weapons for hunting.
We were able to do a driving tour of the top of the Mesa with several stops with views of the various cliff dwellings. Unfortunately, we were too early in the year for the ranger lead tours of these structures.
Headed to another Casino to “boondock” that night – Ute Mountain Casino.
The next day we drove to the one place in the US in which you can be in one place, but touching four different states – the Four Corners Monument. The four states are Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.
We continued on to see Window Rock and the Navajo Code Breakers Memorial. There were several Navajo soldiers who were instrumental in transmitting messages in code during WWII. The Germans were never able to break the code of the Navajo language, thus giving Americans a big advantage during the war.
We headed for Homolovi State Park in Arizona for a couple of nights. On our first night, there was a Pink Moon. One of the other campers got a picture of the moon rising behind Van Go.