March 10, 2018 Utah

Day 2: Saturday March 10, 2018:

We got up bright and early this morning, had a great breakfast, and drove from Albuquerque to Mesa Verde via Bloomington, NM, Aztec, NM and Durango, CO.  It took about four hours to get up there.  We got pictures in front of the sign then turned left into an amazing visitor center (it looked to be new).  

We bought the hat pins and magnets and got the passbooks stamped then we went into the park.  It was cool because last year in Arizona a park ranger convinced us to buy a national park pass because, just based on the places we were going to in AZ, he said it would pay for itself, which it did.  But it didn’t expire until this March so we’re able to get into all these parks on the same pass!

We drove on a long (20mi?), windy road down to the museum and restaurant and got some lunch.  It took a while for the food to come and there was this very old, seemingly severely handicapped man sitting next to us and Grant got his water for him, Ryan got him a refill, I got his food for him and Nick talked to him.  It was our good deed for the day and Grant, who’d been pretty grumpy up to that point, turned his attitude around a little bit.

Our next plan was to take the short ½ mile hike down to Spruce Tree House but we made it 50 feet or so down and the trail was closed down, I think because there’d been some falling rocks.  So we didn’t get to get up close to the ruins but we still had a good view.  

The kids got on the Petroglyph Trail (which is connected to the Spruce Tree House Trail) and walked over to the other side of the canyon but only for bit. 

Next we drove the six mile Mesa Top Loop and it was pretty cool – we saw a bunch of different ruins including the big Cliff Palace ruins.  

Nick drove a short way back (about 10 miles) and I took over while he slept all the way to Moab.  About 30 minutes outside of Moab, we came upon Wilson Arch, just on the side of the road.  It was very short hike but INCREDIBLE!! 

 

Then on to Moab.  We’re staying at the Best Western Plus Canyonlands Inn and it’s really nice.  

We checked in around 5:30pm after some drama around whether or not I parked straight enough.  I thought I was almost perfectly straight but it seemed to upset Nick so he’s stayed in a mood for the rest of the evening.  

Then we walked over to Pasta Jays for dinner (very average food and service).  Afterwards, because we hadn’t really hiked today and I needed to get in 45 minutes of exercise, we walked up and down Main Street and looked inside some shops.  We walked by a sign that read “Texaco” and Ryan said, “What is that? Some sort of play on the words Texas and tacos” at which point she pronounced it Tex – aco (as in Tex Taco without the second T).  It was pretty funny.  Then we passed a Szechuan restaurant and she asked how to pronounce it.  I told her and she said, “I don’t want two tacos I want Szechuan please”, at which we cracked up. 

Now we’re turning out the lights after the kids drank up pretty much all the free hot chocolate they had downstairs J.  Except for only small parts of the day, it was great.  Tomorrow is Arches and Canyonlands and I cannot wait!