Cortez CO - Hovenweep

Today (5/9) we went to Hovenweep. It's an area of abandoned buildings built by the ancestral Puebloans (formerly known as the Anasazi). The buildings are built out of rock and mud mortar and date from the 1200s. They built towers, storage, and multifamily units.


This is a house built into a big rock.


Most of the structures are right on the edge of a canyon. They lived there, they grew crops and built dams for irrigation and hunted local critters. And then they left.


The stone work is pretty amazing. They did good work. Why they left is not known. Could have been drought, war, famine, or just a desire to see what was around the next canyon.




Lizard on a rock.


Hiking into the canyon. It's a short down and then up. That's Jim and Kim uphill from us.


After the canyon we went to a winery. I did not like their wine so much.


But they had a great shop dog.


Tomorrow it's on to Mesa Verde.

Scam Alert for Proflowers.com

Sunday, as we all know due to extensive advertising, is Mother's day. Jim sent flowers to his mom using Proflowers. Boy howdy are we done with them. Apparently there is a screen in the ordering process that requests your zip code, by filling in your zip code you are signing up for something called EZSVER. There's a 30 day "free trial" for which they charge $1.95. If you do not opt out, they then start charging you $14.95 a month. We're still in the dark as to what service they provide. The thing is, Proflowers is giving your credit card number to these people. There are complaints all over the web about this. I called the credit card company, they recognized the company name immediately. The $1.95 is off the card, but I still have to call EZSVER on Monday and opt out. This is aggravating in the extreme.
So, if you're using Proflowers, check your credit card statement.

Moab - MTB ride to Klondike Bluffs

Today was the Klondike Bluffs MTB ride with Rim Tours of Moab. It was HARD, but it was fun. We rented full suspension bikes and I must say I am now a believer. In addition to being more comfortable in the lumpy stuff, they seem to track better because they're not bouncing around so much as a hard tail. Even better for me, it's a more upright riding position, so less weight on the hands and shoulders than with my present bike.
This is a dinosaur footprint in the rock. See the toes?


Jim riding up the slickrock. It's called that because it was slick for the horses' hooves. Mountain bike tires get good traction.


Jim and Jenna, the Rim Tours guide, coming out of a narrow little slot canyon.


After climbing for about an hour and a half, we walked to this view point in the Arches National Park. It was a stunning day, we had perfect weather.


This is coming back down. That would all be rock.


Jenna and Jim. Jenna was a really good ride leader, we enjoyed her company. She is so strong, we were dying going up parts of the climb and she just motored up it. She and her husband enjoy 3 month self-supported bicycle tours in the Andes, as high as 16,000 feet.


So, that was today. I came back from the ride and immediately took a nap, I was just pooped from the effort. Not sure what we're doing tomorrow, Thursday we're outta here and are going to Durango to get our pocket door fixed.

Moab - Canyonlands and Arches parks

Saturday (5/4) started out as a beautiful day. Look at the blue sky in the trees. Moab is full of the mountain biker vibe. There are heavily tattooed people, hiking boots and technical fabrics everywhere. This is the Slick Rock Cafe, complete with a yellow devil dog on the sign. We decided to drive out to look for the Bar M mountain bike trail head.

This is the view from the trail head. Look at the clouds forming over the hills. Within minutes of taking this picture, the most amazing thunderstorm rolled in. I thought they were major in North Carolina, but this was MAJOR.


Driving back into Moab the rain was sheeting sideways, it was hailing. It was pretty impressive.


Same day! The T-storm moved out and the day became nice. We drove out to the Island in the Sky part of Canyonlands. I have to say, that this is the most amazing place we have been on the continent. Click on the photos, I left some of them large so you could see detail.
Those are the La Sal mountains in the background.



I took this at the Grand Overlook.



Zillions of years ago, this was a flat plane of sedimentary rock layers. Over the zillion years, water and wind have made it into this.



There was a one mile walk around the rim of the canyon. Unlike so many parks on the east coast, there are zippity doo-dah guard rails. A person could walk up to the edge and fling themselves into oblivion if they were so inclined.



This is another view point. Click on this one, it's really good.



This is the salt upthrust. The gray thing in the middle is salt. It's not known why it upthrust.


Sunday - we went mountain biking on the Bar M trail. People leave their dogs tied under their trucks with water bowls. It's better than having them die in the car, but he looked so forlorn.


Jim riding up slickrock. I don't know why they call it slick, it's actually bumpy.


Today, we went back to the Arches National Park. It, too, is an amazing place, but I think Canyonlands is more amazing.
This is Delicate Arch.


This is the trail up to Delicate Arch. No guard rails!


Petroglyphs from the 1600s.

Skyline Arch.

Tunnel Arch.


Pine Tree Arch.


More scenery.

Tomorrow we're up to do a mountain bike tour up on the Klondike Bluffs. We're renting full suspension bikes, it should be interesting.

PBS is running a really good series called "We Shall Remain", about the fate of the Native Americans at the hands of the Europeans. It's heartbreaking, but well worth watching. It's been interesting to watch since we've been around the reservations lately. Look for it.

In Moab

Thursday (4/30) we drove out to Arches National Monument. Like everywhere else around here the scenery is spectacular. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and met a couple of guys riding from Grand Junction, CO to Tucson, AZ.
The flat thing on the back of the bike is a solar panel. They're using it to recharge cell phone batteries, cameras and et al. They are recording the trip using a cell phone, camera and the internet.


Rider number two is towing a Bob trailer.

/* begin rant
When I was working, I routinely resisted meetings dedicated to quality circles, process improvement, stating our assumptions and our go forward positions, and all the other manufacturing specific jargon. It just seemed to me to be a painful elaboration of the painfully obvious. If your business is manufacturing, one should seek the most efficient way to make the product. If an error is detected, find the root cause, eliminate it, and improve the product. But no, apparently this is not the way American manufacturing works. I have not one, but two, more examples of this.
We were driving down huge hills Wednesday, the brakes started moaning and vibrating. It's a warped front brake rotor, rotors shouldn't warp at 10,000 miles. We called the Moab Chevy dealer, he's quite familiar with the problem, they're seeing a lot of it.
The pocket door in the RV is broken. The screws for the track are coming out of the ceiling. We called the dealer in Durango. Oh yes, they see this all the time. They have developed a fix and can make it better.
Why has QC passed from the manufacturer to the customer?
/* end rant

Ok, enough whinging. Friday we got the truck fixed. While the truck was being fixed we rode the mountain bikes on the road. We went into the Arches National Park, which was a very pleasant climb. Here are some Moab pictures.

This is a lovely pedestrian bridge that parallels the Hwy 191 bridge. It was quite pleasant riding across it, away from the giant trucks on 191.


Friday morning seemed to be Ride Your Jeep Off-Road Day. There were large groups gathering before driving out onto the desert. There is a service in town that will guide groups out into the desert so they can do whatever it is that 4-wheelers do. I personally think they should all get bicycles.

Balanced rock. Someday it will fall down. The rock supporting it is eroding faster than the top rock. There used to be a smaller balanced rock there, but he fell down in 1975.

More rock.


Today is unpleasant. It's overcast, the wind is howling and it's spitting rain. Ah yes, the sustained wind speed just increased a bit. We did laundry yesterday, so perhaps we will go for a drive in the truck with our shiny recently turned rotors.

Page, AZ to Moab Utah

Greetings gentle readers. Alas alack, I have no pictures from the Hummer tour. For some reason, the guy working the desk indicated a 9:00 am start. Unfortunately, the tour we signed up for started at 8. At least we got our deposit back. We're going to try it again in the fall on the way back to Tucson.
So, we had to find other entertainment for the day. Here we are on the bridge by the Glen Canyon dam. This is looking above the dam at Lake Powell.


Looking below the dam.

This is the bridge that runs across Glen Canyon below the dam.



So, after looking at the dam we decided we would go hike. The park ranger at the GC Dam Visitor Center told us this would be a nice hike out to an arch. Nice, HAH! We walked about an hour up a wash in really deep sand. It was more trudging than hiking. We never did see the arch, an hour was enough trudging.


This is a big Juniper. The trunk is just shredded, but it's still green.


Later, we were at Wally World and we saw this vehicle.


It has a snorkel! Anyway, I stalked the people into Walmart and asked the lady where they were from and what were they doing. They're from Germany, they shipped the Land Cruiser over via boat. They started on the east coast of Canada, drove to Oregon and now they are working their way back east. They plan to spend about a year on the continent. I would like to point out that there is no air conditioning unit and no sewer outfall. These people are much tougher than I am!


So now it is Wednesday (4/29), we drove from Page, AZ, to Moab Utah. What you are seeing here are sand dunes with some vegetation. 200 million years ago this was part of the largest system of sand dunes the North American continent has ever seen. These "sand seas" are known as ergs. The erg was eventually hardened by water and minerals into sandstone. The sandstone was over 2,000 feet thick in places and stretched from Arizona to Wyoming. At this time the sandstone is becoming sand again.


This is somewhere on the way to Moab.


It's a beautiful drive. The road was not that good, but the scenery was spectacular.


THIS is why I never have any cling wrap! This is my beloved husband plastic wrapping the hitch in the truck bed prior to putting the hitch cover on it. He doesn't want to get the inside of the cover greasy. I do love that man, he's so much fun to watch.


So, we're in Moab for 8 nights. We have internet! We have cable! We're happy!