We took a couple of weeks to swing up into the southwest corner of Colorado, setting up camp in Cortez. We found the town of Cortez to be very comfortable--small enough to feel cozy, but big enough to have conveniences we appreciate. The town's planners have certainly done a great job in creating recreation facilities. The town is full of nice parks for outdoor activities, and it has a huge indoor recreation and fitness center. If it weren't for the cold winters, we could certainly see the appeal for living there.
We chose Cortez because of its proximity to several sightseeing venues. Mesa Verde National Park is just 10 miles west of the town. We, of course, visited the park. We took a short hike to the cliff dwelling Spruce Tree House.
We also took a hike to see the petroglyphs there. The trail did not have a classification (easy, moderate, difficult) as we've seen in other parks. Having taken the trail, we would probably define it as 'difficult'.
It's possible that we may have opted against taking it if it had been designated as such. That would have been a mistake because we had no real problem navigating it and we would have missed the petroglyphs.
Four Corners National Monument is an easy drive from Cortez. The landscape around it is filled with interesting rock formations.
The monument is not only at the intersection of state lines for 4 states, it is located on the boundary of the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain tribe. The monument is managed by Native Americans. The monument itself is well done, but the parking lot is in very rough shape--dirt with deep potholes. We wonder if some of the entrance fees shouldn't be spent on needed improvements. Nevertheless, we took the obligatory picture of us standing in 4 states at once.
Cortez is at an elevation of about 6,000 feet. We drove up another 3,000 feet to the town of Silverton. We hoped that the aspen would be turning at that elevation, but we were a bit too early. The scenery was still beautiful.
The town of Silverton is much smaller than we had expected, but we enjoyed walking around the streets for a while before heading back down to a more 'lung-friendly' elevation.
Our last outing was to drive back into Utah to see Arches National Park. We decided to take a longer, scenic route through Monument Valley en route to Arches.
Many western movies were filmed in Monument Valley. A few days after driving through the valley, we ran across the old movie "Stagecoach" on TV. Knowing that it had been filmed there, we had to watch it to see if we recognized the scenery--and we did.
Our visit to Arches National Park was on the weekend immediately before the impending government shutdown. We had intended to get a hotel room in Moab so we could spend an entire day leisurely exploring the park. We don't know if it was the threatened park closure or the Gay Pride Festival going on that brought so many people to Moab that day, but there was not a single room available anywhere in town. We tried to make the most of it, and decided to see as much as we could of the park in the waning hours of daylight before driving back to Cortez. We weren't disappointed.
Taking some hikes would have been nice, and maybe we'll be back some day to do that.
We enjoyed our stay in Cortez, but it was time to move on to Albuquerque. We had a date with a bunch of hot air balloons and friends that were meeting us there. (The 'hot air' adjective applies only to the balloons, not our friends.)
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