100!
It’s the evening of day 99, and we have just returned from a walk around a few of the loops in the Mesa Verde National Park campground. We arrived here on Friday as it began to snow, the Minnie’s first (and hopefully last) snowfall, and plan to head out tomorrow. During our walk, we were both pretty dumbfounded that Monday will be day 100 on the road. How did that happen?!!
As of the close of business today, we have hiked 365 miles. Not bad considering we slowed up considerably when we hit some bad weather and I was doing some work. The Minnie has over 12,000 miles on her so we’ve gone somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000 miles since we bought her in April. We have been to seven national parks, five national monuments, forty-eightother public land areas, and we have slept in the driveways of seven dear friends.
Leaving everything we know and living in a twenty-three foot motorhome has been a huge change, but we absolutely love the Minnie and already wonder how (or if) we will transition back to living in a house that does not move. Our lives are pretty simple since just the essentials came along, and we’ve adjusted really well to the small space. Even on freezing rainy days it feels cozy rather than small. It is, however, a huge challenge to keep the space clean. It takes about five minutes for it to feel like a tornado has run through here, and Alanna is an excellent tornado! Plus, we seem to have a special talent for tracking in dirt & rocks, so we have to sweep almost every day.
For the most part we sleep really well in the Minnie. Last week, we tried out parking lot camping for the first time at Cabela’s in Salt Lake City. TOTAL FAIL! Alanna woke me just after midnight because a semi was idling right next to us. Apparently, it had been there for over twenty minutes. We ended up heading down the road to a county park and sleeping through the rest of the night once I got over the notion that we had entered the Twilight Zone and things were going to end poorly alongside the Jordan River. Those are the times I regret watching so much Law and Order.
We have been journeying south from Idaho and were intending to explore a number of places in western Colorado along the way, but early season snow storms caused us to alter our plans. We spent a couple of nights atop the gorgeous red rock canyons of the Colorado National Monument watching storms roll across the valley below. A lull in the 60mph winds enabled us to descend the winding road from the monument and head farther south.
For the last week we’ve travelled roads lined with trees displaying quintessential autumnal colors, but the sharp yellow of the Aspens around Telluride took our breath away. Each leaf seemed as though it was lit from within. We drove through the area in the lull between two snowstorms. The high peaks, the glowing aspens, and the snow dusted spruce trees made for quite a show, and our faces hurt from smiling at so much beauty.
We both love the history and culture of the southwest, and have had tremendous experiences exploring Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings in the past. The sites in Mesa Verde are busier, but still breathtaking and the concentration of sites is remarkable. There are over 600 cliff dwellings and 5000 archeological sites in the park. At one point today we stood atop the canyon and could see 12 different sets of cliff dwellings. Today we hiked through Long House, a 150 room cliff dwelling, with a ranger named Jan who was a retired archeologist. She was tremendous, sharing not just the basic facts of life on the mesa, but also the culture and oral history. Jan’s reverence for the Ancestral Puebloans and their ancestors that still reside within the cliff dwellings was greatly appreciated.
Tomorrow we head into New Mexico to explore more new places. It’s been an amazing 100 days and though it is not always easy or simple, we certainly consider every day a gift, assured each night before we drift off that we are incredibly fortunate to be on such a unique and exciting journey.
