Day 11

Miles driven 494 – Total Miles 3884 – Marcos, CO to Williams, AZ – 12 hours on the bike

All night I heard the plopping and bubbling of a stream nearby, but hadn’t known how close it was until the morning. There was a nice little stream about 20 feet from where I set up camp. After packing and heading down, I also discovered I had driven by a lovely little lake in the night and didn’t even know it. Besides the animal dangers and falling asleep, this is another drawback to night driving… you miss some great scenery.

After leaving my rest spot, I headed straight in to Mesa Verde National Park. From the highway, you really don’t know what to expect as all you see ahead is the towering mesa. Once you get up there and begin to drive along you really see both how large it is and how it gets its name. The flora is so green and lush, the roads nice and curvy… and then you start to come upon the canyon walls that in contrast to the other places I’ve seen, aren’t barren but covered in life.

Mesa Verde really captured my imagination. Seeing the first couple of cliff dwellings tucked into the holes in the canyon walls, I felt like an explorer. Each canyon offered an opportunity to search for a dwelling as there are over 600 dwelling site and most aren’t marked. The dwellings can range from tiny one room spaces to huge multi-room complexes. But each is a new discovery which fills me with excitement.

The native Americans who lived here would climb up and down these cliffs to get up on top of the mesas where they would hunt or farm. I suppose that the cliff dwellings gave them protection from the cold weather as it is up around 7000 or 8000 feet there. Some of the bigger dwellings looked like apartment buildings with many rooms all stacked together. There are a few of the large sites that you can visit on your own, and a few others that you need to go with a guide. The prices are very cheap, I think $3, but I am not very good with sitting through hour long tours with 20 other people so opted to just check out what I could by myself. I actually did a few hikes in this park as it was too exciting to miss. What a cool place this was. My favorite park so far.

The stop at four corners is almost mandatory if you’re in this area. I wasn’t expecting to have to pay to see it, but at $3 per person it’s not that bad. You pay for everything now-a-days, or rather someone is always trying to make a buck. Over all it’s a pretty unexciting place with just a steel marking stone surrounded by concrete showing you where the four states meet. But it is kind of a weird mental construct to wrap your mind around that you’re standing on all four states at once if you stand on the marker.

Most of the rest of my day was then an adventure in frustration. I decided to skip the Natural Bridges Monument as it would have added 200 miles to my trip, and instead drove for Antelope Canyon. I got there at 5:15… just in time to have them tell me the last tour leaves at 4 pm and is done by 5 pm. Great!! Well they also are charging $20 per person, but the pictures I’ve seen of it looked like a place not to miss. I guess I have to miss it though as I’m not going to stick around until 8 am the next day.

After a few hours of riding and racing the sun through the Navajo reservation I reach the Grand Canyon just half an hour before sunset. The shear size of the canyon is majestic. I stopped at Grand View Point and took most of my photos while watching the sun set on the canyon. Impressive because of it’s size for sure, but it still didn’t fill me with wonder and excitement as much as Mesa Verde did. But I’ve always known that I’m have an explorer personality, so ruins presents a depth that fits well with my needs.

It had now been 4 days since my last shower and shave, and I was feeling the need to get clean. I thought staying in a motel on old Route 66 would be the travelers thing to do on this journey, so I found a suitable place called Route 66 Inn which is located in Williams, AZ, and got a nice long hot shower in and shaved off my 4 days of growth. How refreshing!! It felt so good in fact I took another shower and shave in the morning

Alas, the drawback was that getting the internet to work in these small towns is a pain in the rear. I was able to connect for a short time, but then couldn’t get back on, so… I wasn’t able to post my next days journey and will have to batch them up soon.