Mesa Verde Trip: Four Corners and Yucca House

[Peter already chronicled his thoughts on our trip on The Colorado List, so check out his post on these two sites here!]

The second day of our trip was jam-packed – Canyon of the Ancients, Hovenweep, then lunch at Four Corners! After doing so many trips to national parks, visiting Four Corners was a shock to my system. It is the definition of a tourist trap. With lots and lots of grumpy tourists. Everyone just wants a picture of themselves at the four corners, so they have a sign up that reads “Only 3 pictures at a time”. Well, the group in front of us said: “I paid good money to get in here, so I’ll take as many pictures as I want!”. As if everyone else didn’t have to pay the entrance fee? Overall, not the greatest experience we’ve had. I suppose it’s just something you have to do while you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way for it.

Back to our national park spree – the most unusual place we visited was Yucca House. It’s near Mesa Verde National Park, and since we were running low on time, we switched our schedule so we could go there and stop by the Mesa Verde Visitor Center before the end of the day and spend the bulk of the next day at Mesa Verde.

Yucca House.

First of all, the directions from the national park service on the website seemed super sketch. They included going down a dirt road, turning when you saw a particular building, don’t leave the road because you’ll trespass, then park next to someone’s barn where you’ll see a gate to walk through to get to the site. And the drive to get there felt as sketch as we had anticipated. It wasn’t even clear exactly where to park since you were obviously parking in someone’s driveway! On the bright side, I guess this is a good example of private and public lands working together?

Second of all, the description that we read ahead of time does not do the site justice. We knew going in that it had been preserved as a national monument in 1919 and been left untouched since then. It was an Ancient Pueblo site that was never excavated.

“Never excavated”

That translates to “unidentifiable mounts of grass and dirt”.

Okay, okay, I know I’ve shown a lot of disdain for the place. Conceptually, it’s pretty cool to see what most of the other sites in the region (like Anasazi) looked like when archeologists first discovered them. It helps give scope to the reconstruction work that was done at Lowry Pueblo and Aztec Ruins, and it makes the fact that places like the Ancient Cliff Dwellings in Mesa Verde survived intact even more impressive. It would have been helpful to at least have signposts or a map describing what we were seeing. If you’re going to have plenty of time in the area, you might as well make the drive to visit it. Just be careful to not block the driveway!

For more information on Yucca House National Monument, you can visit the National Park Service Site.

Mesa Verde Trip: Hovenweep

[Peter has already blogged about the entirety of our trip over at The Colorado List. You can check out his pictures and thoughts from Hovenweep here!]

Back in June, Peter and I did a road trip to the Mesa Verde / Four Corners region with an ai to visit 6 national park sites in the span of 4 days. The first was Canyons of the Ancients, and the second on that trip was Hovenweep. It’s across the border in Utah and many people pair it with a trip to visit Moab and Arches, so we were unusual in the fact that we weren’t coming or going from Moab. We had driven through Canyons of the Ancients to get there, so we weren’t going to be starting the hike to visit the structures at the coolest part of the day. Thank goodness for our water packs! (We had put one hiking/hydration pack on our wedding registry but someone gave us two – one of the most frequently used gifts! We wouldn’t be able to do nearly as much exploring without them.)

Again, due to a lack of time, we had to pick just one part of the national monument to explore, so we stayed near the visitor center and did a 2 mile hike in the Square Tower area. This hike would take us around (and down) a canyon that had 10 different structures from Ancient Pueblo people. The structures were so impressive. The detail, the angles in the walls, and the fact that has been so well preserved for hundreds of years. It’s incredible.

I first realized on our Great Sand Dunes trip that I am becoming a “park person”, or at least someone who dresses like one. Apparently when you dress in hiking pants, hiking sandals and you’ve got a hiking backpack on while at a national park, people will naturally assume you know what you’re doing and stop to ask you advice on the trail. Peter usually finds these interactions more entertaining than I do because 1) he actually is a park person and will probably become a retired volunteer at one if we live near one at that point and 2) I am such an introvert. I actually prefer to whisper him questions to ask the rangers rather than ask them myself. I know, I know, that’s over the top. But I just enjoy soaking up the area around me while being all wrapped up in my own head.

Whether you’re visiting the Four Corners region or doing a visit to Moab, make sure you take time to visit Hovenweep! You can get more information from the National Park Service.

Mesa Verde Trip: Canyons of the Ancients

[Peter has already written about this entire trip, so if you’d like to see his pictures and read his thoughts, please check out his post!]

If you’ve missed the first two installments on Durango and the Anasazi Heritage Center, check them out!

The Anasazi Heritage Center serves as the visitor center for Canyons of the Ancients. We got recommendations from the park rangers on what to actually see with the time that we had. We had a great evening in Cortez (shoutout to the Loungin Lizard for being one of the best restaurants I’ve found in Colorado! The farm fresh food is absolutely delicious and the service was fantastic!)

The Canyons of the Ancients is an interesting place because of how much private land you drive through as you both get to the park and drive through the park. My poor Corolla handled its way over the gravel roads. We were not prepared for what to do when farm dogs run into the road and refuse to move away from the car. (Seriously, does anyone know what to do in that situation in the future? The park rangers did not prepare us for that!)

We finally made it to our first of two stops – the Lowry Pueblo. It was incredible. It was an expansive structure that had been added to over many years while it was inhabited. For the sake of preserving part of it, they had erected a metal covering and reinforced some of the walls. That meant you could actually walk inside! The temperature difference was drastic. No wonder people constructed the pueblos to be partially underground. It was very cool to get to see this site up close, which is why the rangers recommended it. Most of the time you can’t experience historical sites like this.

The second site we visited was the Painted Hand Tower. Apparently, if you climb to it at the right angle, you can see painted hands below it. We weren’t exactly prepared to do a climb, so we hiked until we could get a good view of the tower then wrapped up our visit there. We drove through the rest of the park to head t our next site – Hovenweep.

A Weekend in NOLA

Two years ago, Peter and I got to spend our week-long honeymoon in New Orleans. It was a dream come true for me (and Peter planned it all as a complete surprise – all I knew was that I needed to pack for warm temps and high humidity!) We ate out at amazing restaurants, visited the Audubon Aquarium, had lunch on the steamboat Natchez, listened to a concert at Preservation Hall, took a hands-on cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking, and much more! It was a blast!

Thanks to a serious illness back in the fall, we had to cancel a trip and had refund credit with Frontier Airlines. There weren’t enough credits to get us back to New York, so we looked at where else it could take us – back to New Orleans! A very quick trip, just flying in on Sunday in time for lunch and leaving on Tuesday right after lunch. So we hopped on the plane to celebrate our second anniversary in New Orleans!

We didn’t plan any major events for the time we were there. We were surprised at how much we remembered from the first time – Peter still had the map of the city memorized (or at least the grid of all the major streets). It was a nice mix of going to familiar places and new ones. We ate at a few of our favorite restaurants from the first time around – Cafe Pontabla near Jackson Square, Commerce Restaurant (a fantastic diner for breakfast), and Sucre (the best gelato sundaes you will ever have). But we also walked through the French Quarter to different neighborhoods to find new places to eat. The highlight of that was finding “The Praline Connection” with incredibly delicious Southern cooking, and an amazing praline bread pudding for dessert.

We did lots of walking, despite the heat and humidity. Both Sunday and Monday we got close to 7 miles of walking (which was entirely necessary given the food we were eating). We explored part of Louis Armstrong Park. And for a very short time before our flight on Tuesday, we stopped by the Visitor Centers for Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve, and the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park. The Jazz HPS is an interesting place because it is the only NPS site in the country dedicated to the preservation of music, not land. They do that by regularly performing jazz music and by running a mentorship program where kids can sit next to experienced jazz musicians and learn to play by ear, the same way people have learned for decades.

It was a whirlwind trip, and we still have more on our list of things to do for the next time we can make it there. But we’re thinking it should be in the winter months instead!

This was the location used for the exterior shots of Pride’s bar in NCIS: New Orleans

This was the location used for filming the exterior of the office for NCIS: New Orleans

Another exterior location from NCIS: New Orleans

Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve

Mesa Verde Trip: Anasazi Heritage Center

[Peter has already chronicled our visit on his blog The Colorado List. You can check out his thoughts on this stop here.]

After our stop in Durango, we made it to Dolores to visit the Anasazi Heritage Center – stop #1 of 6 at national parks. This center serves as the visitor center for nearby Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. It’s an interesting arrangement – we had never been to a park site where the visitor center wasn’t on the same land as the monument. It turns out that Canyons of the Ancients was able to be preserved by making many arrangements with landowners and farmers in that area over many years. That means there isn’t much leftover space to put a visitor center there! They also had another archeological find at the Anasazi Heritage Center site, which means you get to view an Ancient Pueblo dwelling up close after learning about it.

Peter and I have joked about how this trip was a deep dive into learning more than we ever thought we could about the Anasazi or Ancient Pueblo peoples. But growing up on the East Coast, we learned about our own local native ancient peoples, so it was interesting to learn about a “new to us” people group.

[Side anecdote: When we arrived, Peter was wearing a Buffalo Bills “Football is Family” shirt and I was wearing my white Bills hat. When the park ranger greeted us, he said “So you must be Bills fans?” We explained that though we live in Denver, we’re originally from Western NY. “That makes sense. Either that, or there was a big sale on Bills gear. So how do you feel about the Broncos?” Once again, we explained that there isn’t really a rivalry and we enjoy cheering on the Broncos “But you hate Tom Brady too, right?” Ah yes. Broncos and Bills fans can always bond over a common enemy!]

The Anasazi Heritage Center is a terrific place to start for anyone looking to explore the Mesa Verde area. The museum there is great in setting a foundation for what archeologists know about the Ancient Pueblo people and the artifacts are astounding. As the name suggests, the peoples in this area lived in partially subterranean pueblos to help cope with the climate in the area. They were extremely talented at creating pottery. And – this is one detail I don’t fully understand but was emphasized at every site – the influence of the southern Chaco people is seen in the T-shaped doorway.

At the site, there were two pueblos – one of them (called the Dominguez Pueblo) was excavated then backfilled to help preserve it. The other one was a short climb up a hill and was called the Escalante Pueblo. It’s incredible to think how long this building has survived.

For more information on the Anasazi Heritage Center, please visit the Bureau of Land Management website. Once again, I can’t emphasize how important stopping here was for setting the foundation for the rest of our trip.

Mesa Verde Trip: Durango

[Note: Peter has already written about this trip on his blog – The Colorado List – and I will share those links with my corresponding posts. Here is his Mesa Verde I post.]

Peter and I are working toward seeing as many national park sites within driving distance of Colorado as we possibly can. Peter is a genius at planning short road trips, and our major one for this summer was to visit the Mesa Verde region. During those few days, we wanted to visit 6 park sites – and make sure to get passport stamps from all of them! (If you haven’t heard of it, the “Passport to your National Parks” program allows you to collect cancellation stamps from the various visitor centers. It’s a fun way to keep track of where you’ve visited! We had to upgrade from the small passport book to the Explorer Edition because we were getting too full in the Rocky Mountain Region! To learn more, check out this link)

The first day of our trip included driving down from the Denver area via Highway 285 to make it to Durango by lunchtime. Peter usually does most of the driving while I handle entertainment options: audiobooks, National Parks Trivial Pursuit, sing-alongs with my custom made playlist, etc. It was going to be 6-7 hours with very few stops if we were going to keep to schedule for that first day. We did stop at one overlook which had a great view of the Collegiate Peaks.

 

Once we made it to Durango, we had lunch at the Diamond Belle Saloon in the Strater Hotel, which has been in operation since 1887. We walked through the downtown area to stretch our legs, then poked our heads into the railroad museum attached to the Durango=Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway. You can actually see the carriage house and trainyard! The little kid in me who loved watching Thomas was really excited. After our break, we headed to the Anasazi Heritage Center – stay tuned for more on that!

RMNP: Upper Beaver Meadows

Rocky Mountain National Park has quickly become my favorite national park site (and we’ve been visiting quite a few of them lately!) It was time to renew our “America the Beautiful” annual pass, and our air conditioner is not helping us beat the heat at all, so we went up to visit the park for a Saturday.

We had plans to do a different hike, but we ended up going to Upper Beaver Meadows and hiking around that area. While we were there, we got to see a wedding party get set up for the ceremony! It was a short and flat hike through the area, but we had the chance to see so many different wildflowers. I did get bit up by the bugs which proves that I’m that much sweeter than Peter.

We decided to drive through the park for the second part of the day. We stopped first at the Alluvial Fan – an area created by a lake breaking higher up in the mountains, dumping rocks through the whole area. We drove up to the Alpine Visitor center by taking Old Fall River Road. This was originally the only way to get to that point in the park, but now it’s a seasonal one-way road. It doesn’t have the spectacular views of Trail Ridge Road but it was great to see a different part of the park. You primarily drive below the tree line, right next to the river. You even get to see a few waterfalls!

We enjoyed a picnic lunch at the Alpine Visitor Center, which was the warmest it’s ever been when we’ve been up there! No sweatshirt needed! After our lunch stop, we decided to drive through the “back half” of the park to the Grand Lake entrance. I had never gone past the Continental Divide, and I was excited to see this part of the park. After stopping at the Kawuneeche Visitor Center we officially have national park passport stamps from all four visitor centers in RMNP!

South Dakota Series #3 – Devil’s Tower

Our continued “throwback” series to the family road trip to South Dakota. You can check out the previous segments here and here.

On our way to South Dakota, we stopped at another National Park Service site – Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. It was actually designated as the first National Historic Monument 10 years before the NPS was founded. There are a few different theories as to how the geological formation was created – some scientists believe it’s a volcanic plug, others that it’s a laccolith (a mass of igneous rock that pushes up on sedimentary rock that eventually erodes).

It looks massive, even from a distance, and it’s astounding when you actually reach the park grounds. This was our first substantial hike of the trip – we were going to follow the trail around the base of the monument. The most surprising part was realizing how each side of Devil’s Tower is different. In some religions, it is still considered a holy site so we needed to be careful not to disturb offerings that were left along the trail.

The view from the trailhead.

Many of the Native American stories surrounding the area include a large bear chasing young girls who are saved by the creator god lifting up the rock. The lines in the rock were made by the claws of the bear in the stories.

The opposite view from the Tower

Great Sand Dunes National Park

The second part of our mini spring break trip!

After going to Bent’s Old Fort, we drove to Alamosa to spend the night and get plenty of sleep before our big adventure – Great Sand Dunes National Park!

We actually were a bit eager – we made it to the Visitor Center before it even opened! Peter has been to the park before but during the summer season. Visiting the last week of March counts as going to during the winter season. This had a couple of advantages. There were fewer people than normal, and the temperatures didn’t get too warm. On the other hand, we were FREEZING when we first got there with how much the wind was blowing! We ended up buying Peter a hoodie because we miscalculated in packing. Thankfully, I’m always cold no matter where I go, so I had a sweatshirt with me. I also got to break in my brand new comfy hiking pants and the Columbia pants were worth the investment!

We set out to hike as close to the First Dune Ridge as we could get. Peter had warned me that we’d have to make it through Medano Creek before we got to the sand. But since it’s the winter season, there was no creek! We got to start walking on the sand right away.

The most exhausting part of the hike was trying to get up the ridges. It felt like you were walking up an escalator going the wrong way. We made it about halfway up to the tall First Dune when we realized we have severely miscalculated. If we wanted to keep going, we’d have to walk down and back up about half the distance we already traveled. And even though I can be pretty stubborn, I had to concede defeat and we headed back down after appreciated the views we did have. Turns out, that was a wise choice – my knees started aching on the way down. I can’t imagine how much they would have hurt if we had continued to climb.

We ended our time at the national park by eating a picnic lunch there – one of my favorite parts of our short road trips is being able to always plan a picnic meal! And we hit up the visitor center to get our National Park Passport Stamps and my usual stack of postcards to send to friends (if you want to be on the mailing list, leave me a comment!)

We opted to not take my nice camera into the dunes so we wouldn’t get sand in it, so these are courtesy of my BlackBerry Priv.

Bent’s Old Fort – La Junta, CO

Peter and I are on a quest to visit every National Park Service site in Colorado. We’ve already visited every NPS place in South Dakota last summer, so it seemed natural to try to get Colorado checked off the list!

We’ve already gotten to two of the locations – Rocky Mountain National Park several times (here, here, and here), and Dinosaur National Monument. So Peter planned a two-day trip to visit two locations over spring break.

We got out early the first day and headed into southern Colorado. I had only been as far south as Colorado Springs previously, and I was excited to see what that part of the state looks like. I was very surprised to see how different it looks – nothing like the Denver metro area! I haven’t traveled much in the Western states, so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it felt like it should be a different region than “Colorado”. You lose sight of the mountains, everything is flat, tumbleweeds kept attacking our car, and you feel like not much has changed in the past 60 years. (In many of the towns, you could tell that the signs on the businesses hadn’t been updated in that long!)

Our first stop was to Bent’s Old Fort outside of La Junta. It is a reconstruction of the 1840s adobe trading fort. The original was burned down under mysterious circumstances – rumors said that William Bent burned it down after his wife and several of his brothers died of the cholera epidemic there. The fort was one of the first permanent American settlements in the Southeastern Plains. It was situated on the border with Mexico along the Sante Fe Trail. Bent, St.Vrain & Company built a trading empire out of this post, keeping good relations with the nearby Native American tribes and brought goods from Europe out to this area (and vice versa). One of the visitors to the fort was a surveyor who took detailed measurements of the fort, which made the reconstruction possible.

The majority of the rooms in the fort are furnished because during the summer they put on a number of living history events. We took the self-guided tour through the rooms, climbed on the roof, and had a great time exploring the fort.

Since I was a history buff growing up, not much of the information was new to me, but there was one tidbit I was impressed by – they actually grow cacti on the walls around the livestock yard, because it was a natural form of barbed wire to keep horse thieves out!

If you are traveling through Southern Colorado, I highly recommend exploring the Fort! It’s a quick visit, but well worth it! You can view highlights from the visit below, or follow this link for the full photo album!

 

**Notice the cacti on the walls?**