Day 25

What I thought was going to be just a long day of driving, was a day of surprises.

Never having been in this part of the country or traveled these road before is bringing a whole sense of nuance and unexpected adventures to our trip.

We got an early start In order to leave Colorado and go to Arizona. Had a five hour drive ahead of us.

I noticed that we were less than 50 miles from Mesa Verde and was told by Joe (neighbor) not to miss it. So I decided we would “stop a minute” on the way and see it.

At the exit, we took a wrong turn and got to see these fun horses laying. The girls are mesmerized by horses. In fact that’s pretty much what they have been looking for in every state across the country!

Then we headed into Mesa Verde. I told the girls we could only stay an hour because we had such a long drive ahead of us.

Guess what. You can’t see Mesa Verde in an hour.

We spent 4 hours there!

There was a fire on top in 2002. The trees have charring all over them and there is pasture land.

And guess what we saw!

Such an unexpected surprise!

Becca running back to the car to get her binoculars.

Wild horses!

We saw wild horses!!!

It was soooo cool!! A total blessing.

Then we got to the top. When we started this day I had no idea we would be seeing Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings! We grabbed our water snd set to explore!

These things are incredible!

We hiked as much as we could to get as close as we could. On the hike the girls felt like Indian children playing in their backyard. Finding all sorts of interesting things.

Different cactus plants

Thick snow plots to walk through

Cool rocks to make necklaces with and write with.

They played tic tac toe with just rocks.

There were some amazing rocks

And lavender moss!

And the views, spectacular.

We wanted to find ALL the houses we could.

A whole canyon of cliff dwellings!

Their favorite. Cliff Palace

They said my bedroom could be so far back and under the rock that even I wouldn’t be scared to live there!

These truly are some amazing structures. Envisioning life as a cliff dweller all those years ago was enlightening.

We got back on the road again, but it was long before they spied an antique store they wanted to go in. I told them 15 minutes! That’s it!

It had some really cool western things and an old fashioned soda shop in it! We could have spent two hours!

We found a few treasures and made it in and out in record time, 23 minutes.

We had a LONG drive ahead still.

Then we started seeing these giant stone ant hills and these mountains that look like the tops have been cut off them!

Miles and miles of them!

What the heck are these?!

We drove over miles of desert.

I’m telling you, driving west at sunset is brutal!

But there was the most gorgeous Lavendar hues in the East. The quick pics through my car window don’t even begin to capture the color!

After 10 hours, we finally reached Arizona

We were 5 miles from our resort and were warmly greeted by flashing blue lights and the local Sheriff’s deputy.

Turns out your tires are supposed to complete suspend all forward rotation at a stop sign in Arizona. I clarified.

Grateful he was nice and let me off with a warning.

Welcome to Arizona!