Today we had planned a half-day trip to Mesa Verde NP, which is in southwest Colorado, about 15 minutes down the road from Cortez (where we spent the night). You can't really experience this one without hiking, and since dogs aren't allowed the first thing we did was drop off Daisy at a kennel in Cortez. A note to anyone thinking of building a dog kennel... be sure to build real, opaque walls. We've taken Daisy to three kennels now: the one in Eugene, the one in Vegas (fortunately only for an hour or so), and this one in Cortez. This one and the Vegas kennel were a bunch of cages made with chain-link fence, so all the dogs could see everything. Because of this, they all went crazy anytime a new dog showed up or another left. Very loud, and I imagine very unnerving to a dog who is not used to the place. The Eugene kennel wasn't like this... it was made of actual rooms built out of cinder blocks. There was very little activity when bringing a dog in or out. But the Cortez kennel had its good side, too... each pen had a little door in the back that led out to the yard, so the dogs could spend more time outside.
Off to Mesa Verde... this park was probably the one that I expected the least of, or at least, it has ended up exceeding my expectations more than any other. It wins the award for Most Improved (In My Mind). A little background: The Anasazi Indians lived in the four corners area for over a thousand years, roughly from 0 AD/BC to about 1300 AD. For about the first half of that time, they were nomadic. Then they settled down in villages with, I don't know, houses I guess. Then around 1200 AD, they moved into the cliffs and built these really cool cities:
Spruce Tree House. This is the most well-preserved, and the one we walked around.
Cliff Palace. This is the biggest one, but you have to sign up for a guided tour of it, so we just saw it from afar.
Then, around 100 years later, they abandoned these places. Very strange. I don't think we're sure why they decided to move here (although it was nice and shady and cool under those cliffs even on a pretty hot day), or why they decided to leave, so I will leave this topic and talk about what I saw.
The rooms were tiny, about the size of a walk-in closet. Supposedly an entire (small?) family lived in each one.
The main feature besides all the living rooms were the kivas, which were little round underground rooms, about 10 feet in diameter. These were always built in a certain way (roof with a hole in the middle for a ladder, fire pit, ventilation system, tiny other hole in the floor, and six little cubbies in the wall for little sacred trinkets), and were supposedly used for rituals. But there were jillions of them, so I don't understand why they needed so many. They must've served some more practical purpose, maybe in addition to rituals. Or maybe the 13th-century Anasazi were over-religious zealots who spent too much time building churches and not enough time farming?
While I was looking at Spruce Tree House, I noticed a girl whose face looked familiar. We walked past each other a few times and I noticed that she looked at me kinda funny, then finally she walked up to me and asked me where I was from. I told her Oregon, and then she looked even more puzzled. "Did you go to Franklin High School?" she asked. "Yes..." "Were you in marching band?" "Yes!" Turns out it was Hannah, who was a year behind me in school and in the band (and Goober's little sister). My Oregon answer had confused her because she also lives in Oregon now (Portland). We talked a while. I didn't expect to see anybody I knew in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. Small world?
We left Mesa Verde around 2pm, picked up the dog, stopped for lunch at Sonic (which was next to an empty lot with a bunch of prairie dogs in it, so we watched them while we ate), then headed east. Made it to Durango, which is a pretty cool (but touristy) town. I hadn't gotten to fish at all yet, so I stopped at a fly shop, bought a few flies and inquired about the Animas River. The store man told me about a good spot at the edge of town, just off the highway and behind the Wal-Mart, but as we drove down there I decided I could find a spot further away from town. I was wrong. Soon the highway went up away from the river and onto an Indian Reservation which extended to the New Mexico border. I tried to salvage the day by looking for a place to fish on the San Juan (home of the famous San Juan Worm fly pattern), but had no luck and just wasted time driving around some pretty sorry-looking country for about an hour). Drove hard, took a left turn at AlbUquerque, and began heading east on good ole' I-40.
There's something about Interstate 40. It has a feel to it. I imagine it has something to do with the east-west direction and the mostly-consistent latitude, but driving down I-40 in New Mexico felt a lot like driving down I-40 in TN. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that if I drove far enough down this road, it would get me home.
Tomorrow is our first big driving-only day. I-40 all the way to Little Rock to We managed to make it a couple hours east of Albuquerque before getting tired, and stayed in Santa Rosa, NM. Tomorrow will be a big day... have to end up at Rachel's brother's place in Little Rock, so we drove a couple hours extra on I-40 tonight and made it to Santa Rosa, NM.
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