We were up at 6:15 to watch the sunrise over the mountains at the other side of the cabin. Beautiful if a bit cold! We just dragged coats on over jammies and grabbed cameras. I stayed on the porch as I had hair that was reminiscent of Worzle Gummage but Stephen was off taking photos all over. We turned up the electric blanket to max and leaped back into bed for a heat when we were done. Bliss!
Breakfast at the lodge was great. We got to meet Sue and Bob as well as the friends they had been picking up when we arrived. They were lovely and we chatted on over breakfast much longer that we intended.
We drove over to Mesa Verde - which again took a lot longer than it maybe should have. Its 20 miles from the park entrance to the cliff dwellings and we were stopping at every opportunity to take photos of the stunning scenery we were driving through. As we were slightly pressed for time and on the advice of the ranger, we walked down to Spruce Tree House to see the cliff dwellings there and then drove round the Mesa top to get the views of the other sites. Stunning!! The buildings were built around 1200 and abandoned about 1275 after many years of drought (or drouth as they called it in the museum exhibits - and I thought it was only Scottish folks that used that expression!).
From Mesa Verde we drove to 4 Corners monument for a quick stop at the only place in the US where 4 States meet. You can stand with feet in New Mexico and Colorado and arms in Utah and Arizona. Cool! But according to our GPS unit, about 50 feet in the wrong place!! Oh, well...lets go with the romance and symbolism shall we?
From 4 Corners we drove to Monument Valley, passing through some utterly stunning scenery. We've well and truly passed from brown dust to red dust now! Oh, and we saw tumbleweed...blowing down the road towards us! We stopped for a few photo opportunities, but we were trying to get there before sunset so we had to press on. We're staying in Goulding lodge where John Wayne and John Ford stayed when filming the Westerns here. Our room has the must stunning views of the Valley. It is just incredible to stand on the balcony and look at it. The sun lights it up like a big lit up thing and the colours of the rock were fantastic as the sun went down.
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