Sunday. Ride the Rockies. Two thousand bicycles riding from town to town through the mountains all over Colorado for a week. This year it starts in Cortez. An easy day for them today, just fifty miles or so from Cortez to Durango. We saw them off (Have a good ride, Nancy). But enough of Cortez. On to Ridgway. We had our routing choices: east to Durango then north over Red Mountain Pass, or north to Dolores then Lizard Head Pass past Telluride, or east almost to Utah, then north through Slick Rock down into Disappointment Valley and east over Dallas Divide into Ridgway. The Durango route was clogged with bicycles and goes over the highest passes. The Dolores/Lizard head route goes right past Telluride, but they’re having their Bluegrass Festival (attendance 10,000) this weekend and traffic should be a mess. We opted for the desolate route, performing an end-run around the mountains to approach Ridgway by the back way through arid canyons instead of mountain passes. Saw about six cars along the way. Settled in at the State Park in our usual spot. No cellphone signal. Judy found a good satellite dish technician while we were in Las Vegas and he got our dish running again, so we have a good internet connection. Happy Fathers Day.
Hovenweep
Saturday. Hovenweep National Monument. Never been there before. It’s not on the way to anywhere. You have to really want to go there. That made us want to go there. That, and their pinon juniper habitat. A day-trip in the Jeep. Winding two-lane along the river west into Utah, then loop around to the north and almost back to Colorado. Wide open. Dry. Pinon juniper. Mesa. Ancient Puebloan stone towers on the edge of canyons where springs used to be. Lot of little birds. No juniper titmouse. A nice day, nonetheless.
Cortez
Enough of Kanab. We head off past Vermillion Cliffs. They’re the ones below Pink Cliffs, and White Cliffs. There are some California Condors flying free in the neighborhood of Vermillion Cliffs, but we didn’t detour to look for them. We followed Highway 89 past Big Water and Lone Rock. Back into Arizona. A good view of Lake Powell. A bridge right above the Glen Canyon Dam, a loop around the power plants at Page. Through Warm Creek, Baby Rock, Rough Rock, Mexican Water, and Red Mesa. Past the southern end of Monument Valley, Four Corners, and settled down at our favorite KOA in Cortez. What a ride! Kaibab Indians around Pipe Spring, I think they were Paiutes. Hopi, Mountain Utes and Southern Utes in Colorado. We spent most of our day in the Navajo Nation. Three planets aligned on the western horizon as the sun set.
Kodachrome
We have a name for rock formations like this in kodachrome basin. They’re called…… chimneys.
Leaving las vegas
Not depressing like the movie of the same name. Not depressing at all. It was a very good conference. It was a good chance to visit with Ken Roth. We stayed at the Bellagio, and I love our fountain view and the conference facilities at the Bellagio. But as good as it was there, it was soo good to get back to our own house. Drove from Las Vegas to Kanab, Utah, a good staging point to bird Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park for the elusive juniper titmouse….. A five state day. Drove north on I-15, tanked up at Mesquite and headed up the Virgin River Gorge to Saint George, hung a right to Hurricane, dropped down through Brother Bill’s favorite place, Colorado City, then Pipe Spring National Monument, back up into Utah to an RV Park in Kanab. Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Arizona, Utah. Not a particularly birdy place, Coral Pink Sand Dunes. Listed a dozen birds, but nothing unusual, and no juniper titmouse. Oh well, there are titmice in Colorado too, we hear. Maybe southwestern Colorado outside Cortez….