Thursday Oct 13, 2022 - Gallup NM to Montrose CO

OK, big news. You may be familiar with my less than perfect spelling, punctuation, proper placement of apostrophes, etc. Well, I've signed on an editor who will check everything before posting. So no more Grand Titons instead of Tetons, etc.

We had frost on the windshield this morning and guess what, no scraper. We smugly gave them away two years ago when we left Vermont for Arizona. So I got my Copper Queen Library card out and went to work. Next thing I knew a man came over and told me about these things called scrapers. We had a good laugh as he and I scraped off our windshield. Nice people are everywhere..

Most of this morning we drove the RVA4 north through northern New Mexico and through the Navajo Reservation. Very open, sandy country but lots of really interesting rock formations and buttes. Skinny rocks that just shot out of the ground way back there somewhere. I have to get that geology person on board...

The first 50 miles or so of southern Colorado were in the Ute Mountain Reservations, again a kind of tough but interesting landscape.

We decided to make a quick visit to Mesa Verde National Park. My Senior pass got us in for free ($30 bucks, ka-ching, I love getting old!).   It was a bit confusing sorting out what was open and closed, so we started with the visitor center. The two rangers at the info desk were somewhat swamped with people, and really swamped by the time we got through with them, but they were great, jovial, and everyone was patient. I thought I had been here 50-60 years ago with my mother and grandmother and a friend named Butch, but nothing fit when I saw the dwellings. Must have been some other dwelling site. Deb did remember being here when she was very young, hiking with her father on a ranger-led trip to a cliff dwelling. It was a perfect blue sky day so we drove the loop, stopped for a nice picnic at a shady table, did a short hike to the highest point to get the vista, another short hike to see the Spruce House cliff dwelling, and then back out of the park to head north. We will come back when we do not have this tight schedule. Look up David NightEagle, the park ranger guy. Looks like Willie Nelson and seems to want to do standup comedy. And he plays the flute! Really fun guy.

The next UPS (unexpected pleasant surprise) was that we realized we could make a quick stop in Telluride,  where we last visited way back in 1986. Much busier now than all of those years ago, but still one of the most beautiful settings. The aspens were all golden, the sun was illuminating the aspens, and the mountains had their first dusting of snow. We took endless pictures but they can't do it justice of course.

Even with the UPS stops we pulled into Montrose around 5:30, ate a couple of big salads at the Stone House for dinner and found our hotel.

Tomorrow we need to pick the van up at 1 pm. It will be nice to revisit here when we have a more relaxed schedule.