The last leg of the roadtrip

Day 18

We got to arches early. It is much different than the other rock formation parks, I guess this is because they don’t claim to be a canyon. It was less spectacular cliffs and more – well – arches. Some were absolutely spectacular, there were two that were right next to each other and you could look through them both from the right angle. Another one, called landscape arch, was incredible by it’s sheer size. In pictures, even the ones I took, it looks like it might be 50 feet wide. Impressive. However, actual measurements show it to be over 300 feet in length. I couldn’t imagine a game of football being played underneath it but there was enough room. In 1991 a group of people were standing on a path under the arch when they heard a thunderous crack, they ran for their lives as 720 tons of sandstone broke off of the arch, crashing behind them. Remarkably the arch itself was not broken. (Someone had a video camera rolling when it happened and I’m sure you could google landscape arch 1991 video and watch it yourself). However, they did close the path that led under the arch.

We got to Monument Valley in time to watch the sunset. However, we were both captivated by a thrilling lightening storm so we drove to a point where we could get some of the valley’s landmarks in view with the lightening and pulled over to take pictures. The lightening had died down a little, but as we pulled up a huge bolt shot down and we got excited. I wasted a set of batteries and about 300 pictures failing, Kyle on the other hand succeeded in getting a mediocre picture of lightening and a video of it, which was too grainy to be worthwhile. We left.

Less than 5 minutes after we left we started seeing the most incredible lightening we’d ever seen, huge bolts zig zagging like zorro cut the sky. I laughed.

Day 19

Valley of the Gods: This is a misnomer, it should be called the Navajo’s revenge at the White Man. It is a beautiful valley on a Navajo reservation, however the roads were a death trap. No speed limits, no “left turn ahead” signs, and absolutely no railings. It was a gravel road and they spared just about every expense within 10 miles in creating the road. It had hills and valleys, valleys and hills, rapidly, and turns at the bottom that you couldn’t see until you were over the top of the hill. We weren’t really looking to go 5 miles an hour so this caused us some trouble and more than once we lost contr… we made the road our rollercoaster. And it was a blast till we were going 25 over this hill and immediately it dropped off and had a 90 degree turn to the right we couldn’t see. We created an intersection and went straight for some feet till the car stopped before coming back to make the turn. Kyle remarked that he would have been embarrassed for driving off the road, had there not been two other tire trails leading off the road.

Mesa Verde, our next stop, added a dimension to the cliffs we’d been seeing during the last few days. The inhabitants there built their houses out of the stone of the cliffs, sandstone. They could score it much like you do glass, and then hitting it sharply, you could sheer off a flat section of rock. They would do this to each chunk of sandstone to make them brick-like. They would use the dirt in the area, a dirt rich in clay, as mortar to cement the stones together. For their time they had some incredible technologies, they had made levels out of clay tubes and jugs to ensure their buildings were straight and level, and they are, incredibly straight. They also used a light calendar, in order to help their farming practices. They had holes in one of the rooms that light shone through every day. They used these in many ways to determine times, some of which being, they had a non shaped rock in the room, and only on the spring and fall equinox (21st of March and September), did the light shine on that rock. It still works today.

After that we stopped for dinner in a park outside Durango and cooked some pasta. They had an incredible playground in the park we were cooking in so I went over to play while my water was boiling. I met some girls, one around my age and one younger, her cousin, playing on this zip line like mechanism that I’d never seen before at a playground. Instead of the monkey bars, and having to move your arms, you could hold on to this thing and it would zip you across. They also had this three foot tube coming out of the ground with a platform on it near the ground. If you stepped on it it would start spinning, it had almost no friction so you could jump on and spin and spin for minutes. If you leaned out you would slow down and if you pulled yourself in, if you could, you would spin really fast. The girls had recently immigrated from Mexico City, the older one did so three years ago and was fluent in English, the other, a couple weeks ago and spoke little to no English. The older one and I talked about the differences between the US and Mexico, she claimed there were little visible ones to her, maybe that would change in time.

We sat down to eat pasta and as we did a biker guy came up and asked what was cookin’. We talked to him about his bike trips, and what bike he recommended for beginners. I could see he respected us for our adventurous youthful nature. And in return, we respected him for revisiting that adventurous youthfulness at retirement.

I made contact with Dave who had just got all four wisdom teeth removed, and set a time to meet him on day 20.

Day 20-22

Arrive at Dave’s and hang out with Him, Liz, Ali G. from Puget Sound, and his high school friends.

Day 23

Dave impaled his car on a small log a little while back and needed to pick it up from Glenwood Springs. On the way there we stopped through Independence Pass, an elevation of 12,095 feet, and hit up a great barbeque place in Aspen called The Hickory House. We all got full slabs of baby back ribs. I was about 3 ribs in when I looked over at Dave who was sucking the meat off the last rib from his slab. Looks like his minor tooth surgery didn’t slow him down too much.

On the way back, for dinner we stopped into Brackenridge at Downstairs at Eric’s, because everywhere else just sucks (their slogan). Good food.

Day 24

Drive through beautiful Kansas back to St. Louis.