Carl Henning

The Shoshone called then “Many Pinnacles.” The Americans called them “Pilot Knobs.” The French you know the French, called them “Le Trois Tetons,” “The Three Breasts.” You would think the French of all people would know they don’t come in threes. Plus baseball anecdote.

The Crossroads of the West is Green River, Utah. They say so themselves. And at the crossroads is the John Wesley Powell River History Museum. It is a hidden gem worth stopping for; just jump off I70 and take Business 70 through town.

Yesterday we were in the park by 6:20am and took our time listening to GyPSy Guide narration, stopping to take pictures. So by the time we got far into the park, it was already crowded. And the road to Delicate Arch, the iconic arch of the park and the state of Utah, was washed out.

So we decided to enter the park even earlier today!

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 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).

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.

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.

On to Mesa Verde National Park, last visited with baby Jeff in 1969.

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 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).