Adventures in archaeology
Cortez, Colorado to Taos, New Mexico
This morning was another early start for MinkeyMo and his companions. This time they went to visit Mesa Verde National Park - the home of the Ancestral Puebloans. These people built their homes under the overhangs on the cliffs at the top of the mesa. Quite something.
Square tower
Cliff palace
After much ooh-ing and aah-ing, our simian cohort headed back out onto the road, this time for a mammoth stretch of beautiful road finishing in Taos, where Marcus was waiting with beer and chicken. Yay for Marcus!
Rural Colorado
Canyon madness
Tropic, Utah to Cortez, Colorado
This morning started off with a visit to Bryce Canyon. What an astonishing place. Years of erosion have left pillars of coloured limestone which the people in the area believed were bad people and animals turned to stone by Coyote.
Leaving Bryce, our intrepid travellers had a last-minute change of plan and headed up All-American Route 12 from Tropic to somewhere else. What a spectacular road. Who knew southern Utah was so interesting (from a scenic point of view)? MinkeyMo, for one, did not.
Desert
Desert
Unexpected Alpine forest
Desert
Desert with yellow flowers
Desert
Desert with mesas and buttes
The desert was obviously not invited over the state line to Colorado and things began to look somewhat greener.
Colorado bean farmland
After an extremely long day of driving, MinkeyMo reached Cortez and collapsed into a glass of beer.