We toured Arches National Park today and the scenery is spectacular even without the arches! In fact the scenery is gorgeous outside the park, too. We took Utah 128 along the Colorado River today. (You didn’t think I meant Massachusetts’ Route 128, did you?)
Canyonlands
Canyonlands became a national park in 1964, but it’s only been developed in the last couple decades (which explains why we did not visit it in 1969).
Dead Horse Point
Today we hit one state park and one national park: Utah’s Dead Horse Point and Canyonlands.
Dead Horse Point is named because cowboys drove wild horses onto the narrow point and blocked the narrowest part. They took the horses they wanted and inexplicably left the rest corralled without food or water.
Riding the Rails
I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day. Or at least that what Kay was singing to herself all day as we rode the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge to and from Silverton, CO. It was a great trip even though the sunny morning gave way to a rainy afternoon. Having booked tickets just yesterday, the only seats left were in an enclosed coach. Actually, worked out better that way considering the rain. Here are more photos than usual and a must-see video.
Mesa Verde
On to Mesa Verde National Park, last visited with baby Jeff in 1969.
The Shiprock
Traveling from Gallup to Durango allowed visits to The Shiprock and Mesa Verde National Park. On the way to The Shiprock, for which the city of Shiprock, NM is named, we saw a number of other volcanic plugs. None of them looked like a ship, including The Shiprock.
El Malpais
El Malpai National Monument includes five lava flows. El Malpai means The Badlands. The rough lava was abundant and a lot of it was aa (one of my favorite Scabble words and one of the 105 two-letter words in the current Official Scabble Players Dictionary).
El Morro
No Chaco for me!
Chaco Canyon access roads were inaccessible from the south so we made other plans: a pueblo and two national monuments.
A Photo Study of Nothing
“Nothing” as in a hole… in a rock… or a window in a rock: Window Rock. Located in the national capital of the Navajo Nation of Window Rock on the Arizona side of the Arizona/New Mexico border.
Replicating Zane Grey
Zane Grey was disappointed in the cabin he commissioned on the Mogollon Rim (pronounced muggy-own). He expected a log cabin, but got a New England style cottage because the builder figured he was an Easterner. (Ok, he was born in Ohio.)