Honeymoon4 - Colorful COLORADO

MESA VERDE National Park

.......continues from UTAH.........

We enter Colorado heading for the town of Cortez. Right away, in the colours, the landscapes, the people, you notice you've changed state. Farms and ranches are frequent. Once we arrive in Cortez, we settle our luggage at the hotel where we'll stay for this night, the Mesa Verde Inn. It's a typical motel, without luxuries and frills. We expected spartan accommodation, considering the price paid, but although on the outside it confirmed our expectations, inside the room proved to be above them. In no time we are back in the car, heading to Mesa Verde national park, a UNESCO heritage site and famous for the remains of the Anasazi pueblos. The park is close to Cortez, but from its entrance to the Visitor Center and then to the points of interest, the road is very long. Nothing like the parks visited so far.

It extends over a mesa completely covered by a pine forest that has unfortunately been destroyed in a fire (at least that's what it looks like). The stop at the Visitor Center here is mandatory, since it is necessary to purchase the tours to visit the most famous settlements, such as the "Cliff Palace" and others. In fact, only some can be visited independently via trails; access to the most famous ones is allowed only with the ranger-guided tour and limited to about 20 people. The tours take place every hour and their cost is about 3 USD per person. At 11 in the morning there were no spots available before 4:00 p.m.........We purchased the tour for the Cliff Palace and continued visiting the park on our own. Spruce Tree is the only well-preserved settlement reachable independently. The others are visible from afar along the scenic pullouts arranged along the road.

By three we had finished everything. For now we are disappointed. Certainly very interesting, but nothing spectacular, much less engaging, compared to everything we have seen so far. The tour with the ranger proves certainly informative, to get more information about the inhabitants of these places, it allows you to get a close-up view but... nothing more. Leaving the park, when it's now 6:00 p.m., we admire the Rocky Mountains in the distance and bitterly regret not having skipped it and not having spent our day with an excursion on the Durango & Silverton....oh well. We hope for a next time.

At Four Corner National Monument

We set off early from Cortez. Today our final destination is Canyon De Chelly, but we have decided to reach it via an unconventional route. We will cross New Mexico, in the Bisti Badlands area, and drive the old Route 66 until we turn north again, once we reach Arizona. Before crossing the border with New Mexico, or rather....on the border.... we visit the Four Corner National Monument. The only case in America where the borders of four states meet at a single point. Although there is nothing there, it is considered a must in these parts, so we decide to pay to take our ritual photo too... in reality there is a monument (rather poor) with the plaque of the intersection point at the centre, the four flags, and all around stalls of Indians selling souvenirs. A nice tourist gimmick, in short... but this is nice too. Passage through New Mexico........continues in ARIZONA.......