Hiking - Garden of the gods

 We woke to temperatures of 31° so we quickly got dressed. Scotty drained the gray water and black water and unhooked our water hose. We then drove over to Garden of the Gods and drove around and did just 2 short hikes there. Garden of the gods was donated in 1909 by the children of Charles Elliott Perkins. It was his wish that the land be free forever for the public to visit the rock formations here were unlike others. We have already seen on this trip. It’s like they just popped up out of nowhere. There are huge towering rocks to walk around. It’s very interesting and beautiful. 

We returned to the campsite and readied the camper for the drive. We packed a lunch to take in the truck and we were off by 10:45. The temperature had reached 40 degrees, And although we had a reservation for one more night, we didn’t want to risk being in a cold rainstorm or worse a snowstorm.

nne Mountain State Park

 As we packed up to leave the great Sand dunes, we saw a family of deer in the grass below us. They eventually worked their way up towards us, and we thought it was a good sendoff.

We got to Cheyenne Mountain State Park and parked the camper. We also parked ourselves inside as it was very, very windy, 30 mph winds. We both agreed it was kind of nice just to hang out in the camper and relax. late in the afternoon, we did decide to take a small hike and we hiked from our camper down the mountain and then back up the road for almost 2 miles. Today smust’ve been a day for deer. We saw three groups of deer along our walk. They did not seem a really, really scared of us. In fact one group of deer almost seem to follow us for a while. 

About 6 o’clock, we realized that the next day cold snowy weather was predicted. Rather than camp one more night on the mountain, we will head over to Garden of the gods, Drive the main loop and then make a decision from there. Most likely, we will hook up the camper drive down the mountain and start heading home.

Hiking - Great Sand Dunes

 Today was a lovely drive across Colorado. We could see snow topped mountains to the east getting closer and closer. We did see some fall color, but I think we probably missed the peak colors by a week or two. We stopped for lunch at the Continental divide which was an interesting and very cold stop. 

The hour drive into the Great Sand Dunes was interesting as it was a big valley surrounded by mountains on all four sides and potato fields immediately around us. I’ve said before that every national park is very unique and great. Sandunes did not disappoint. The dunes of sand are huge and cover quite a bit of distance from east to west we walked from the parking lot out to the dunes, but did not go up into the dunes. It was the toughest we’ve had so far - walking in the sand was not easy and the sand was blowing very hard. Apparently, it is a 3 mile hike up to the highest dune. We got there late so we couldn’t do it and to be quite honest I don’t think I’d ever want to do it.

 From there, we headed over to the Montville Nature Trail and part of the Mosca Pass Trail. The trail was lined with pinon pine trees and we collected some nuts.

We headed back to Pinon Flats Campground. This campground has no water and electricity but a fantastic view of the sand dunes. We had a dinner of cheese and crackers and even a beer. Scotty ran the generator for about half an hour during which time we ran our heater to warm up the trailer. We pulled out blankets to ready ourselves for the night.

Biking/Hiking - Mesa Verde

 Our campground is directly outside of the national park and we have a great view of the Mesa from our campsite. We went into the national park directly to the visitor center. I think this is one of the prettier visitor centers we have seen it is designed so that when you walk into the front door, you can see the Mesa directly above it. As it is autumn, there  lots of fall colored plants surrounding the building and we could also see snow covered mountains in the distance. What I did not like was the drive from the visitors to Mesa loop. There are some steep drop offs from the road which I tried not to look at.

On our way to our first hike, we passed a sign that said fry bread. We had been looking for Frybread on this trip and just hadn’t had the opportunity.This was the perfect place. There is actually land set aside for a Ute reservation here.A Navajo woman cooked up the Frybread for us there and told us how she had learned to make it from her grandmother. It’s actually very simple. It is just flower baking soda, and water that fries in oil can be served with salt, or sweet. We chose sweet her husband, Michael is a Ute man and he used to do backpacking tours. As we sat at our Frybread, he told us some history of the Ute people and how they migrated from Mesa Verde to other locations. 

We first hiked the soda Canyon Trail, which is an easy loop trail about a mile long. It goes through paths lined with pinion trees, cacti, small shrubs, and rocks. There are overlooks where we could see the balcony house and other cliff dwellings. 

We went to the museum, where we saw many pottery, artifacts, and pieces of past relics.One of the things that most impressed me in this museum were the little pieces of pottery that had been returned to the national park with notes from people saying they regretted taking the pieces and new that they really belong to the park and to themselves. We had a bunch of snack foods outside the museum and then got onto our bikes.

There is a 6 mile round-trip loop called the Mesa loop ( a mile from the museum) so we did a total of 8 miles. I had previously downloaded an audio tour and as we stopped at the 11 stops, we could hear information about each stop. It was really a well done tour and audio tape. We saw Cliff dwellings and we were even able to walk near previous dwellings. We could see the changes over the years as the dwellings got more advanced , and the Kivas got more advanced. A kiva is A social gathering place for several families within a community. 

We returned to our campsite and took showers in the camp Bathhouse. We took especially long hot showers as these were the nicest bathrooms we had seen on our trip. They looked fairly new and they were large, tiled and definitely very clean.

Hiking - Hovenweep National Monument

Moab & Arches

 We started the day with a scenic drive along potash Road which is parallel to the Colorado river. It really is a scenic drive as the red cliffs are on one side and the river on the other. We stopped at one point to watch some rock climbers. They were truly amazing to watch. We also stopped at a petroglyph spot. The reflections in the river made the drive beautiful.

We next went to a river trailhead where we got on our bikes. We rode 2 1/2 miles away from Moab before we turned around around and then we wrote all the way back to arches for a total of blank miles. Again, we followed the Colorado river.

At 12 o’clock, we parked outside of arches national park. For this park, you need an entry admission time. Our time was between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock. If you miss your time, you will not be admitted. He ate some snacks and drink some water as we waited. It took us about 20 minutes in line to get inside the park and we went straight to the visitor to get our passport stamp – our usual routine. Armed with a map we drove the road to the end of the park, about 18 miles. This is our fifth Utah Park and it’s amazing to us how different they each are this park is known for all of its arches so we made several hikes for a total of 6 miles visiting different arches throughout the day, I think was broken arch. We hiked all around that arch and in the distance we could see the scallop mountains. As it got later in the day, we headed over to the north and south windows and turret arch to see the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset and I don’t believe our cameras caught the true effect. It was here we also also saw the Wolff house which was A small house about 1500 ft.² were six people lived. Thomas Wolff built the house in 1906 and lived there for two years before he moved his family into Moab. It was amazing to see this history. As we left the park, it was really dark and we could see the shadows Of the formations as we drove out. After such And active day we decided to go out to eat. I’m headed to And had a delicious meal. We have a salad with roasted tomato dressing and Candied pecans and Gorgonzola cheese. We had the best cheesy garlic bread and for a pizza we had mushrooms and sausage. Apparently they make their own mozzarella here, pizza crust and possibly the sausage. We also got a picture of apricot Heights, which was New to us, but very very good we went home tired and full and happy

Hiking -Canyonlands National Park

 We checked into our campsite, Pack Creek RV resort in Moab, Utah.  It’s attached to a permanent trailer park, but we had a nice site at the back with no one beside us.

Our first hike was to Mesa arch, .7 miles round-trip. This was a short easy round-trip hike and at the end there is an arch and you can look through it to the canyon below. It was quite impressive.

We drove about 5 miles down the road to our next hike, which was Grandview overlook. this was a 2 mile round-trip hike along the rim of the canyon. And I have discovered something  about myself on this trip. I can hike up a mountain, at the bottom of a slot Canyon, through a river, but I do not like hiking the rims of canyons. It gives me the heebie-jeebies. Anyway, this hike is on the top of A Mesa so it was fairly flat and pretty much rock or sand The whole way. At the end, it’s obvious Whites called Grandview as you can look in different directions over the canyon.