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.

Comments

Wyoming. Where family has to take you in!

I lived in Kemmerer, Wyoming in 1978, working in a coal mine. Back then, when you entered the state, the sign said "Welcome to BIG Wonderful Wyoming!" It is a big, big state, and much of it is wonderful. I have fond memories of the place. Now, my oldest brother lives there with his wife, (Not in Kemmerer, but in Lander, which seems to be much more civilized) and it was just great to see them. Ah, but the sign. Now it looks like this: Let's zoom in a little: Personally, I liked the old sign better. A lot of Wyoming looks like this: That is a loading silo for the US's second biggest coal mine - Black Thunder, originally owned by ARCO, now by Arch Coal. Different mine, different technique than the one I worked it. But just incredibly huge. You drive through the mine and it just goes on forever. But there is a lot of this, too: We stopped at the Tourist Bureau in Casper to get some state maps (yes, we have been using hardcopy maps, our atlas, as well as The Google Lady o...

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...

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...

The Year of Months

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