Colorado. The Canyon of the Ancients

We've done forest, we've done grassland, we've done mountains, so now we needed to do desert.

Welcome to the Canyon of the Ancients.

But before we got stated, we walked down to the Dolores River.

It was very nice. There is another photo further on down the post showing Doreen all bundled up. It was cold.

The desert was quiet.

There were some mostly unreconstructed, and unmonitored ruins on the hike.

Really interesting

And beautiful

Not as spectacular as over on Mesa Verde, but everyone has to live somewhere

The sky was really blue

And the rocks went from gray to red to white

Many had these intrusions

We never get tired of Self Portraits.

Doreen in the morning

Comments

Nebraska is a BIG state. Especially crosswise and on two lane roads

I think I mentioned below that we bought a Rand McNally road atlas for this trip. This is where it pays off. Doreen has been tracing our route with a yellow highlighter (I will post Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas later) so we can remember where we were. Here is the route through Nebraska: You may note that it ends in Chadron. That is where we ran out of daylight. We would not have run out of daylight had it not been for COVID19 and the Oglala Lakota. More on that later. But on out way from Kansas, we went through the geographical center of the lower 48 US states. See: It is just outside of Lebanon, Nebraska. and yes, that is a cedar tree. We took a self portrait: Then a nice lady asked if we wanted her to take our photo. We said, "Sure!" This is what we got: Of course, I took her photo, too. But not before taking a couple of photos of myself, first. (Thanks, Matt!) I am not sure I mentioned this below, but on the first leg of the trip, we listened to Charles Portis's book T...

Home again, home again.

It's always good to be home. We have never taken such a road trip before, and certainly never with a dog. That was an experience. She loved the long hikes in the mountains, didn't care for the car rides, especially the long one. We, too, experienced new things. We listened to a lot of books on tape (well, Audible), trying to match the words to the Landscape. So we started with True Grit by Charles Portis, set mostly in the Oklahoma Territory. One of my favorite books of all times, and it was read by Donna Tart. ( The Goldfinch , etc). Perfect book for the start of the trip, from Houston to Bartlesville. On the next two legs of the trip, to Hutchinson, Kansas and then up to Keystone, South Dakota, we listed to My Antonia by Will Cather. (pronounced, we learned, as an-tone-EEE-ah). A wonderful book for driving through Nebraska. And we were on the Willa Cather highway while doing so. As we drove into Wyoming, we listened to Rising from the Plains , by John McPhee. The story o...

Custer State Park, where we discovered that Lulu likes hiking but hates small log bridges.

Neither of us slept great on Sunday night, but we were up and ready to go with the dawn on Monday morning. I took with us some of my World Famous Roasted Coffee (this batch from Guatemala) hand grinded it and made us two moka pots to get started. A great way to start the day. It is really pretty here at the cabin. and, of course, there is this: One can look at that as an engineering marvel, but not sure what else. But we soon got to the trail head, and after a little confusion (which is very common for me), we started off. We were, indeed, there. The trail was very easy, except for the 16 creek crossings, most of which were easy for us, hard for The Dog. Lulu does not like log crossings. She doesn't like water, either, but she likes it more than log crossings. She would frequently just walk through the creek, up to her chest, to avoid the bridge. It was a great, fun, walk, though. Lots of mountain medows. And rock bluffs. We stopped occasionally to take a nice sip of cold water. T...

The Year of Months

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