The More you look... the more you see

View from the Fire Ranger Station in Mesa Verde

2004 Four Corners Country Trip

Two summers ago, Anna and I stopped in the Mesa Verde area on a trip through New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming on our way toYellowstone. After spending a day in Mesa Verde National Park we knew that we had to come back to this majestic country when we had more time.

For our Fall 2004 vacation, we planned our trip with a week in Cortez, Colorado and a week in Bluff, Utah as a bases for rides into the country. Click on the highlighted links for pictures and commentary of the different areas we visited.

What we hadn't counted on was rain. We hit it the second day, crossing New Mexico and it stayed with us all the way into Cortez. In fact, regardless of The Weather Channel forecast of showers for Monday, it rained off and on through Tuesday. We took the opportunity to visit the Anasazi Heritage Center just west of Delores, Colorado.

One of the two Pueblos on the AHC grounds.

The research center at Anasazi Heritage Center contains more than three million artifacts recovered when the nearby canyons were flooded to make McPhee Reservoir. It also features hands-on displays that allow you to use tools the archeologists used to study the artifacts they found and a reconstruction of and ancient pueblo. (You can see by the skies that the storms were still shadowing us.)

Wednesday dawned cool and dry so we saddled up the FJR and headed out to Mesa Verde National Park (photo above is a panoramic shot from the Ranger's Fire Watch station). As we climbed up the park road, the temp gauge on the FJR started to rise. At first I thought it was due to the altitude and the slow speeds. We pulled into the parking area for the Fire Watch station and coolant began spewing out of the radiator where it had been punctured by a rock..

No, Pearl isn't Irish although she does appear to bleed green...

We let the bike cool down completely then fired her back up and coasted ten miles down the park road. I left the engine running to lubricate the transmission, but left it in neutral. Once we were out of the park and back on the highway to Cortez, I'd run up to slightly illegal speeds then coast down to 20 or 30 mph while the engine cooled down. It took a while, but we managed to get back to Cortez without serious overheating. Gene Patton at Patton's Yamaha in Cortez was able to fix the radiator and we were good to go the next morning.

Thursday, we were able to spend the day in Mesa Verde National Park then return to Cortez to meet my son Rob and his companion Amy for dinner.

Friday morning, we packed up and moved our base to Bluff. On the way, we stopped to do the touristy stuff at Four Corners. Here's Anna in all four states.

We spent the next four days exploring Southeastern Utah, new territory to us. We spent a day at Natural Bridges National Monument, a day studying the petroglyphs at Sand Island and a day at Edge of Cedars State Park. Plus, I took a trip back into Colorado to shoot the firefighter carvings at Vallecito, north of Durango.

We made one other little side trip before heading back to Texas, visiting Mexican Hat, Utah seeing yet more stunning monuments to the forces of time and erosion. We'll definately put Utah on our list of wonderful places to revisit.