National Parks Spring Road Trip (part 2)

Canyonlands

We drove south out of Moab and entered the Canyonlands National Park.  The first point of interest was the Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument.  Lots of Petroglyphs!  Pretty interesting!  

This is the Dugout Ranch -- a place where cowboys hung out and slept when they were on cattle drives.

At the Dugout Ranch, there were two of these ladders to get up on top.  They were really old, but quite sturdy.

I've seen the above picture in many books and elsewhere, but I'm not sure what it's called.

We didn't get into the "Needles District", but saw it from a distance.  Super cool!  On our next visit to Canyonlands, we want to go into the Needles area as well as do a float trip down Cataract Canyon.

Dave can identify all the layers of stratified rock. It's really pretty impressive.

Mesa Verde

When we lived in Colorado, back in the '80's, we started off once on a vacation to see Mesa Verde, but we had car troubles in Colorado Springs and had to turn around and go back home.  It was disappointing.  We never made the trip to this wonderful place while we lived in Colorado.  (Just like my experience of living in Arizona, and never seeing the Grand Canyon.)

Mesa Verde National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The park was created in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt, to protect some of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the world, or as he said, "preserve the works of man". It features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the Ancestral Puebloan people, sometimes called the Anasazi. There are over 4,000 archaeological sites and over 600 cliff dwellings of the Pueblo people at the site.

Here are some pictures of our Mesa Verde adventure.

These pictures are of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwellings.  We had to take a Ranger-led tour to go through it.

The round, hole in the floor type rooms are numerous, and we were told that they were called "Kivas."  They have some religious significance.

While visiting Mesa Verde, we got a room in Cortez, Colorado.  This is where our son-in-law, Ryck Tanner is from.  We checked out the Blue Bird Flour Mill, which his family owns, and bought some flour for our kids, as a souvenir. 
From Cortez we drove to Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Telluride and Montrose.  It was a spectacular drive, with wonderful scenery.

At one point, just before we got to Ouray, we saw a sign directing us to Box Canyon. 

 There were a lot of stairs -- but it was really pretty!

 Sue above the Box Canyon.

 Looking down on the town of Ouray.

This is Telluride.  It was 85% closed, with signs on the door saying they would open in May or June.  I guess we caught them between seasons.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

While staying in Montrose, we drove to the "Black Canyon of the Gunnison". 

I'd (Sue) never know about this National Park.  It's pretty spectacular -- so is Dave.

This is the view from down low, at the Gunnison River.  Some gold medal fly fishing.  Dave was excited!!

There were some really pretty camping spots down in the valley.

Colorado National Monument

From Montrose, we drove to Grand Junction, Colorado.  I (Sue) had never taken note of the beautiful scenes of the Colorado National Monument.  We have been in Grand Junction many times.  I guess we never got close enough.  

 I really liked the blue skys and red rocks.

The formation on the left looks a little like the climbing rock on the commercial for Citi Bank.

We had a wonderful trip!  Seven days of seeing so much of the beauties of God's creations.  We had good weather the whole time and we loved the change of scenery and change of pace.  We're still glad that we have each other to share it with.