Mesa Verde. You need to see this place

As per usual, we took the dog out for a morning stroll before we got going. That is The Stoller on the Stroll.

It was very cold (for us, anyway) about 30 degrees F! Yikes! And this was September! How do these people live up here?

But it got warmer in the park. Like most (all?) National Parks, dogs cannot go onto trails, and cannot be off leash (we never let Lulu off leash), which does restrict you a little. Many of the trails were closed, though, due to COVID, and you could not enter any of the cliff dwellings, so that wasn't that big a deal.

The place is just amazing. You can see why The Ancestral People wanted to live there.

I am so afraid of heights, that it gave me the heeby jeebies just looking at these places. To tell you the truth, I was glad the dwellings were closed, because I would have forced myself to go into them. And I would have been very scared.

I don't know how much of this has been reconstructed since the discovery (well, bad word. Re-discovery? Exposure?) in the 1880s. Archaeologists operated differently back then.

Very cool.

They are all built in these alcoves.

There were some recreated Pit Houses as well. Not as spectacular, but probably more indicative.

Across the Arroyo.

This was a very good day. You should all find a time to see these.

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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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