The caravan Startes

Mesa Verde Looking up from bottom

Petroglyth from the ancient people

Horseshoe Bend the river goes 7 miles to only gain 1.5 miles in its coarse to the sea

Mullie point

Natural Bridges NP

Top of Laplata Mt with old mining equipment

Top of Laplata Mt looking to sleeping Ute Mts

Gorge as seen from train

Durango Silverton Train

The back of the train

Long House at Mesa Verde NP

Long House

The tunnel we had to squeeze through at Cliff house

Escalate Ruins

Mullie Point

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

Mexican Hat

                                                         SOUTH WEST CARAVAN

Durango Colorado is our start to the Airstream caravan. This is where we meet the 31 other trailers that have come from all over the country and Canada. Durango was originally started as a Railroad town and today the Durango/ Silverton railroad is the centerpiece of the tourist draw to the area. This railroad is a narrow gage rail that originally was designed to bring oar to be processed in Silverton. The trip to Silverton courses through spectacular scenery including large gorges filled with cold mountain water coursing south in the Animas River. Our car was open so we got to experience soot and embers generated by the antique coal fired steam locomotive. In fact all our clothes were black dusted at the end of the day.

The town of Silverton is a tourist town today. We had lunch in an old restored hotel with much of the old furnishings from the day. I felt we were on an old Western movie set.  We had a couple of hours to explore the town before boarding a bus to go back to Durango. It was a 45-mile drive through the mountains down to Durango with more spectacular scenery along the drive.

The other activity in Durango was a Jeep ride up the Laplata Mountains where we saw ruins from an old mining town dating back to the late 19^th century. The views and scenery in general were great but the ride was really bumpy, good thing they had seat belts or we may have been bounced out of the vehicle.

There was some free time in Durango so I was able to search for my “B and B”, that is Bakeries and Breweries. We found an excellent bakery and two good microbrews. There was also time for us to do some birding along the Animas River where we picked up several new species of birds.

Next stop only about 50 miles west is Mesa Verde National Park. This parks main emphasis is archeological significance to the 4 corners area. It is also a World Heritage Site. People inhabited this area from about 550 AD to 1280 AD. These were the early or ancestral Pueblo People, in the past known as the Anasazi, who were the fore bearers of many of the present day native American tribes including the Hopi and Ute not to mention many others. These people lived in what are known as pit houses on top of the Mesa where they farmed corn, beans and squash. As time progressed they moved into the pueblo homes contained in the alcoves in the steep cliffs of the canyons. We went on 2 Ranger guided tours that took us down the cliff and into what is called Balcony House and Long House.  To visit Balcony House we had to scale a 38 foot ladder and traverse a tunnel only 18 inches wide.  Here we learned about the people and their culture, as it is understood today. It is amazing to think we were walking in the same place people walked and lived almost 700 years ago.

On August 25^th it was the National Parks 100 birthday. I feel so lucky and humbled to be in such a special place. At our campground in Mesa Verde there was to be a celebration but the weather didn’t cooperate, it rained that evening.

Over in Deloris Colorado the BLM has the Anasazi Cultural Interoperation Center. They have a world-class museum with many artifacts from the area. This was a Stone Age culture. There was no metal until the Spanish showed up in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Imagine cutting down a tree with a stone ax, sewing with a needle made of animal bone with a fiber from a yucca plant, creating garments out of turkey feathers or animal skins.  The oldest artifact was a piece of a basket dating back 7000 years!

On to Bluff Utah only about 100 miles through some dry desolate terrain. The closer we got to Bluff, a town settled by Mormons in 1880 the redder the rocks became. Bluff is a small town of about 200 people, not much different than 1880, the major difference the Mormons are all but gone. The story of the Mormons was told by a museum that described the arduous journey to Bluff. This band of people came with the mission of making friends with the indigenous native Americans. They set off on what was to be a 6-week trip that turned into a 6-month slog that included blasting out what was called a hole in the rock into a barely passable road to take their horse and ox drawn wagons through.

Bluff is a good point from which to explore The Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley and Natural Bridges National Preserve. The ride through the Valley of the Gods included a section of gravel road known as Moki Dugway, a series of switchbacks snaking up the sheer face of a very large Massa. I should add there are no guardrails and grades of 10% with hairpin turns, best driven with eyes directed straight ahead not down over the edge. The view from the top of the Massa, Mulie Point was spectacular. Monument Valley is on a large Navaho Reservation where we had a guided tour that explained the history of the area and some of the Navaho Culture.