Blue Water Lake Campground to Cortez Colorado

The view SW from Park Point Mesa Verde

After leaving Blue Water Lake Campground in NM we turned north at Gallup NM to Cortez, Colorado.  Just about the time you start thinking that this is a really dull drive, with nothing really spectacular to see, up crop these large stone mountains, one called cathedral rock. 

Cathedral rock

The highway goes right between two of these as you head into Shiprock, NM.  There is one more structure, that really does look like a ship several miles west of the highway.  It had been quite windy, so the dust in the air was pretty high, making for really hazy photos, so none were taken. This is a monadnock and part of the volcanic eruption that occurred approximately 27 million years old.  

 

As you cross into Colorado, in the SW corner, you immediately feel that you’re in a new state.  The hills are bigger, the scenery becomes grander, not to mention that the land starts to look greener.  We passed through on a slightly stormy day, no rain, just lots of dramatic clouds creating cool lights and shadows on the hills.  Just a single peak would be lit up, then as we found a spot to pull over, the clouds covered it up.  Only to be viewed not photographed!

 

We had a nice campsite in the La Mesa RV Park.  Bigger than we needed, but it worked.  We toured the local watering holes by foot and kayak for birds – Tom had several good sightings, including some terns, and gulls. 

Denny Lake in downtown Cortez, .25 mile from our campsite.

We kayaked in Denny Lake, right in town, and Totten Reservoir just outside of town. The large McPhee reservoir north, near the town of Dolores, was quite low.  From the boat ramp to the water, we guessed about 80 feet. 

Lefty, happy to join the adventure, getting high at 8572 feet.

After a morning of kayaking we headed up to Mesa Verde National Park to view the cliff dwellings. We are still a bit early in the season for some of the guided tours. 

The structure near the top is the early blanket house, the bottom shows the masonry pueblo.

 

 In other areas, we’re discovering that we can’t get tickets to get in to park attractions, or even parking lots as they’ve been sold out for months! We choose to take the self-guided tour at the Step house.

 Since we’re usually dinking around on the way to and from something watching birds, or climbing on the ground getting bugs or flowers, this worked out well, not having to keep with a group.  This cliff dwelling has been dated to both 620 CE (common era), pithouses and 1226 CE, a masonry pueblo. 

Tom was more interested in the Swifts flying under the cave ledge than the dwellings!

 It was interesting to stand there, looking across the valley, and imagine people gathering water, and food, and fighting off predators from this location.  

As usual, if there's a unique window, I've got to photograph it!

This looked like a face about to "blow"!

A stormy day looking down the road to Long House with skeletal trees from forest fire.

On our final day, we drove out McElmo Canyon,

 Country road G, and had a lazy, meandering drive the 26 miles to Utah, a few bird and short hike stops along the way then turned around and came back to camp, to load the truck and trailer for a departure the next morning.