Mesa Verde National Park, CO and Moab, UT

Thursday, October 29 - Red Bay, Alabama

We are currently located in Red Bay, Alabama, at the Tiffin Motor Home factory. We arrived here yesterday morning to have some warranty work done on our coach before heading to Florida. But, more on that in another blog.

I know that it's been a while since my last blog entry, but we are not able to get WiFi access every night, so I have to wait until we get to a spot where we are able to access the internet reliably. I have some catching up to do, so this blog will cover our visit to Mesa Verde National Park and our trip up to Moab, Utah from Colorado.

We had originally intended to travel west from Farmington, NM to Kanab, Utah to meet with Lol and Cal Hargreaves before they headed back to MA, and we headed up to Bryce Canyon N.P. However, after doing some research on the condition of the roads west, we decided to travel north through Colorado, stopping in Durango and Mesa Verde N.P., before heading into Utah toward Bryce. Had we not taken this route, we would have missed some spectacular scenery and sights. I've already mentioned Durango in my previous blog, so I'll start with Mesa Verde in this one.

Mesa Verde National Park is located in southwest Colorado, approximately 30 miles north of Durango. This park was once home to native Americans known as "the cliff dwellers". We got to see the "homes" they built into the sides of the cliffs in this rugged land. As we learned, at the top of the cliffs, the men would till and cultivate the land and grow crops. Each day, they would climb the sheer cliff walls to tend their fields, and to harvest the crops when the time came. One of the challenges they faced was knowing exactly WHEN to plant, and WHEN to harvest. It is thought that they built their homes in the cliffs to protect them from predators and enemies. Be sure to take a look at the pictures from Mesa Verde in the web album.

From Mesa Verde, we traveled into Utah and on to Moab, where we planned to visit both Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. Along the way into Moab, we got some great photos of the ever-changing landscape out here. We have been blessed with great weather since we left Albuquerque, but once we got to Moab, we did get rained upon for at least one afternoon. Fortunately, we had already been to Arches N.P., so we delayed going to Canyonlands until the next morning. Unfortunately, we had to leave the campground we were in and take the motor homes, since the management would not allow us to stay in the campground until early afternoon (they were going to charge us for another night's stay if we did). So, we left and drove to Arches, where we were able to park the motor homes and take a car to Canyonlands N.P. As I mentioned earlier, the scenery and landscape changes out here every time you go in a different direction. Canyonlands was NO EXCEPTION! Be sure to check out the pictures from here in the web album.

My next entry will be Bryce Canyon, and the trip there from Moab.

Here are the web album links from Mesa Verde and Moab:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/MesaVerdeNationalParkCO?authkey=Gv1sRgCIHFk6bYtfTnVw&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/OnToMoabUT?authkey=Gv1sRgCMX3vYSbpPDNqQE&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/ArchesNationalParkMoabUT?authkey=Gv1sRgCNaj3qvulcOCWQ&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/cbenoitiii/CanyonlandsNationalParkMoabUT?authkey=Gv1sRgCOCp_KnRls6B_gE&feat=directlink