Day 21 – Mesa Verde

Miles traveled: 210
Hours on Road: 4.5
States covered: 1 –Colorado

Last night was the worst night’s sleep I’ve gotten thus far on this adventure. The night was warm, dry, windless, and quiet; the exact opposite of what I would have guessed had anyone asked me what I thought the night was going to be like. Every night we’ve spent at this altitude has been, at the very least, cold. Most nights have also been very damp. Even if we didn’t wake to an obviously wet tent, there was a dampness about the air. Not here. As for the wind – we nearly got blown off the sand dunes, and we had to weight down the tent while it dried out because we really thought it might blow away, but at bedtime, there was nothing. And there was not a sound to be heard outside of our tent. The night was silent. Well, silent outside the tent, anyway, which brings me to why I had such a lousy night’s sleep. I was between Jeff and Cal, and sleeping between the two of them was like sleeping in a wind tunnel. They both were breathing like they were in an iron lung and their chests were being manually enlarged then decompressed, enlarged, then decompressed. All night!! And there wasn’t a sound outside the tent to help counteract their raucous lungs!!

We showered first thing, which was a great way to start the day. Then Jeff and I bought coffee for us and doughnuts for the boys, and we went to check out the Dunes Visitors Center. We were on the road by 10 a.m.

We hadn’t noticed on the way in, but the road leading to the Sand Dunes Park is lined with Black-Eyed Susans. We also realized that it must have rained everywhere around us (the clouds had been visible throughout the area), but the rain never reached us at the dunes.

Because we wound up staying only one night at the dunes, rather than the two I had planned, as soon as we got cell service I called the Mesa Verde campground and got us an extra night there. I also called our new van loan’s bank to make sure the auto-withdrawal I’d set up before leaving had gone through. I didn’t want to be late with my very first payment. Even with the fun of vacation, real-life responsibilities still exist. It was all set up, so I tore up the check I had taken along to mail just in case.

In the town of Del Norte we crossed the Rio Grande. It wasn’t quite what I’d pictured from the ABBA song. If you look at the photos, you’ll see what I mean. And what’s with naming a town in the very southwest corner of your state “Of the North”? Did they plan to belong to New Mexico?

The boys all wanted a soda, so we stopped at a little store, and it just happened to offer 64 oz fountain soda drinks for 96 cents. Each boy got one. I estimated that there was 3000 calories in each soda. Parker and Cal finished theirs; Trey barely drank a quarter of his.

The canyon that contained Wolf Creek was fun to drive through. There was rock wall, river, road, rock wall.

The next big mountain we crossed had those deadly (to me anyway) switchbacks and a 7.5% grade for nine miles. We stopped partway down to get a view of the valley, and our brakes smelled awful; they were getting pretty hot. We had some lunch to kill a little time, and the brakes worked fine after that. We were almost to the end of the steepness, anyway.

We saw a rock sticking up oddly from the top of a rock-filled mountain. Turns out, we weren’t the only ones who thought it was odd. Others had thought it was outstanding enough to name it – Chimney Rock.

Shortly after the town of Durango we could see the cliffs that are Mesa Verde. Again, we drove through switchback after switchback, up, up, up. Our campsite, Morefield Campground, is in a valley that lies near the top of the mesa. We signed in and learned that they’d had torrential downpours the night before. Rain here generally lasts 30 minutes, but the day before it had started at 4 p.m. and didn’t stop until 6 a.m. The effects of the downpour were evident in the mudslides in several of the campsites.

This was another of those campgrounds where you pay first and then you go find a site. Only here, the sites were great, though most were a little too small for our giant tent. We eventually found a great one. Down a couple of steps in the middle of low trees, we had a very private site that was cozy and close to the bathroom. We had been told it was supposed to rain again, and we heard thunder, so we quickly set up the tent and headed to the laundry area to clean our clothes. They also had wifi available.

We finished the laundry long after the rain had stopped. By the time we went back to our campsite, the sun was shining. We ate bratwurst and potato salad and played some board games. The kids in the site next to ours asked the boys if they wanted to play kick the can, but not only were we in the middle of a game, Trey had also fallen earlier while checking out a tent site, and he had hurt his ankle pretty badly, so they opted out of running around in the dark. I didn’t really want them out of my sight, being the worrier I am, so I’m glad they didn’t want to play.

As we brushed our teeth before bed, Jeff and I saw giant lightning strikes off in the distance, but they were so far away, we never heard any thunder from them. We went to bed and read for a while, then we fell fast asleep.

For corresponding photos, go to:
http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1892501027/a=2740108027_2740108027/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/