I left Santa Fe on Monday with a heavy heart. It’s always difficult leaving something you love.
My stay in Santa Fe was extended by a day as it turned out that a friend of mine, Claude, was in town with her partner and family celebrating her gran, Bee’s, 100th birthday. They were having a party on Sunday evening so she asked me to join them. That was worth changing any plan for.
What a special occasion. Bee’s words to her family were, ‘the only thing in life that matters is love’. I couldn’t agree more. Bee’s love for her family, and their love for her, is so apparent. It was a true privilege to share in this celebration with such a wonderful family and their friends. Happy birthday again Bee. I hope you have a wonderful year!
As I needed to make up some ground I decided to stay in Cortez instead of Durango. One of the sights I really didn’t want to miss was the Mesa Verde National Park. The ride should have taken around 5 hours, but due to me taking the wrong turn and having to do an extra 60 miles, it took around 6 hours.
It is not often I would say this but what a great mistake it ended up being. My wrong turn meant that I ended up driving through Carson National Forest along Highway 64. I cannot tell you how much I love the landscape along the Colorado/New Mexico border. I actually found myself slowing down on the ride between Tierra Amarilla and Chama because I wanted to savour every second of the journey. It was simply stunning!
I arrived in Mesa Verde around 4pm but between the weather taking a turn; me running low on fuel; and all the guided tours for the day being sold out I decided to call it a night and head to Cortex. The upside was that I had time to go out for dinner, so I spoiled myself to a Ribeye steak. Woohoo!
I booked two tours in Mesa Verde for Tuesday morning. The first was for the Cliff Palace tour and the second the Balcony House tour.
The park guide book calls the Park enchanting. I could not think of a better word. It goes without saying that I found the park inspiring. Looking at the well preserved remains of people’s homes built into the ground as early as 900 AD and then in the cliffs from 1100 AD is difficult to describe.
I found the level of skill in the construction fascinating. There were clear signs of storm water drainage and the Kiva’s were ingenious! These rooms are circular in shape and built into the ground, which would have had a roof over them. In the middle of the room there was a fireplace and the chimney was directly above that. On the southern side of the Kiva were the air inlets which was screened from the fireplace by a deflection wall to allow fresh air to be circulated through the room while the fire heated the room.
I have included a photo of a Kiva below as well as some photos of Cliff Palace and Balcony House. I hope you enjoy them. There are a lot more photos on my Mel & Trinity Facebook account if you are interested to see them.
So that you get a feel for the landscape in which these cliff dwellings are built, please see the photo below.
Archeologists estimate that the Ancient Pueblo people built the cliff dwelling in the mid to late 1100’s and that the dwellings were abandoned at around 1280. They are not sure why but they think it may have been due to a 25 year flood and thus the fact there wasn’t enough food to sustain the potentially 5,000 strong community living across Mesa Verde.
The amazing thing is that the Ancient Pueblo people would farm the land on top of the Mesa’s, thus having to scale to cliff walls to work the land each day. They farmed maze (much smaller than by today’s standard), beans and squash which formed their primarily food source. There are signed that they built little retention walls in the cliffs to hold water back to help feed the crops, and there own water supply came from within the caves (water seeps through the sandstone and gets trapped when it hits shale i.e. the cave floors).
I absolutely loved this Park and I would encourage anyone to see it given the chance.
The only accommodation that I could find near where I wanted to be that night was a campsite near Monument Valley. This was therefore my intended destination following a visit to Four Corners Monument. This is where four of the U.S. State borders meet, namely Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
I arrived at the monument to find a queue of people waiting to take a photo of themselves at the monument.
In front of me in the queue were two Americans from Buffalo, Nick and Cassidy, who of course I started speaking with (I know, I can’t help myself). Anyway, they had this funky little attachment for their iPhones which allows you to take different types of photos with your camera. It’s called an Olloclip. I’ve included the link to their website in case you want to check it out.
http://www.olloclip.com/home-video/
The attachment allows you to take different types of photos from wide-angles to fisheye. The photo below was taken with the fisheye lens (I think) from Nick’s (well technically his girlfriends) phone using the attachment. They sent me the photo later during the day by text. How cool is that! What you cannot see is that the area captured by this photo is probably 5m x 5m. Not something any normal camera could pick up from a selfie.
From here on my day got really interesting!
From Four Corners I had about a 2 hour ride to get to where I was staying at Monument Valley. There were just two issues. There was a storm brewing, and the camp site I was staying in was accessed by dirt road.
Given that I did not know how long the perceived ‘storm’ would last I started heading to Monument Valley. About an hour into my journey I knew I was in serious trouble. The wind had picked up dramatically, so much so that it was throwing me around the road and blew away one of my flip flops that was under my hiking bag on my bike (Ang this storm did you a favour).
I discovered the above when I stopped at a gas station to find out if there was any accommodation nearby but there wasn’t. The nearest town, Bluff, was 9 miles away so I thought I’d see if I could find a place to stay there. About half way there I saw three lightening strikes in front of me in what felt like 30 seconds. It became very apparent that there was no way I could head in that direction (west) so I made the decision to head north and try and outrun the storm. That was my theory anyway.
Let’s just say I made a lot of promises to God on the 36 mile journey to Blanding which is where I was hoping to find accommodation for the night. It did not help when I arrived in Blanding to find that there was not any accommodation available in town or anywhere remotely nearby. For the first time on my trip a bit of panic was settling in. The motel I was standing in allowed me to use their wifi so that I could look for accommodation and then in walked Ed, Steve and Felix very clearly on motorbikes.
After a short conversation with Ed, who had started talking to me, I basically said that I would help pay for their room if I could sleep on the floor. I had my camping gear so I was happy to do that. I just wanted a roof over my head.
It turns out that Ed and Felix are brothers and they were sharing a room. They ended up sharing a bed so that I could have the other bed in the room to myself (well with Sam of course). The guys were amazing! Not only would they not take any money for the room, they also would not let me buy them dinner as they said I was their guest.
I didn’t feel like a very good guest having imposed myself on them but I certainly appreciated their kindness and generosity. They were my knights in shining armour (as it turns out fellow BMW riders).
Gentlemen – thank you! I don’t know why I would have done without you.
Below is a photo of me and my three heroes.
Mel & Trinity 