10-09-07 Tuesday

Up and breakfast then on the road! Down the highway, we caught Cottonwood Highway and it is 40 miles of gravel/dirt road. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and extremely varied. We did pass a few other cars, but not many. The cottonwoods had started turning yellow and the rock formations were just awesome. There was lots of bentonite, plus rock formations that were just great.

Along the way we passed Kodachrome State Park and stopped there to drive through. There are stone pillars (over 70 of them) throughout the park. This was high desert country and it was very unusual. Lots of variety in the scenery today. We were also driving through part of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument - an absolutely gorgeous and unusual area of the country. It is huge in area and we only drove through a minor part of it but it was still pretty.


We did pick up a lot of dust. Took us 2 hours to make those 40 miles, but it was worth it. We figured we cut off an hour of time doing this and then we went to Monument Valley. Annie and Carol were absolutely awed by this as were we. This is our third trip to Monument Valley and it just keeps getting better. From Monument Valley we took a bit of a detour to head up one of our favorite roads in this part of the country....Moki Dugway. As we approached I heard Annie say from the back seat "the road must go through that gap there" and I just started laughing. Carol then said "Oh ___!" as she realised we were headed straight up the 1100' cliff in front of us. Switchback after switchback took us straight up the cliff. From the top we could see Monument Valley. We spent a couple of hours there driving through and it is so awe inspiring. All we needed was John Wayne to come riding aound one of the monuments being chased by a bunch of mad Indians.

From Monument Valley we headed to Mesa Verde.....It was a bit longer that we thought....we passed right by 4 Corners, but the gals had no desire to stop. We finally arrived at Mesa Verde...it was pitch black and there were thunderstorms in the area and we were treated to a lightning show on the way up. You have to go about 15 miles in from the highway to get to the lodge. We had made reservations at the lodge in the park and after we got to the room, we had a quick drink and then went to dinner in the dining room. We got a table by the window and were able to watch the lightning. It was great. However we did have a few problems with the room....which I won't go into here...suffice it to say that it was probably the worst place we have stayed.