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Dead Horse Point State Park
275 million years of deposits and the Colorado river gets you a view like this. 6/6/06 - An auspicious date this one, the 62nd anniversary of the Normandy landings and the cleverly scheduled release here of the remake of The Omen at the cinemas. For our part we marked the evil day by travelling route 666 out of Utah and into Colorado. We were only mildly spooked by the number of ravens flying around though fortunately they were not the eyeball pecking variety.
We had travelled up from Page Arizona via the superbly named town of Mexican Hat with an overnight stop in 'cone city Arizona' (actually Moab in Utah where the entire main street was coned off and being dug up, which only added to our wrong side of the road driving perils). Our destination in Utah was the Arches National Park, another spectacular display of orange rock weathered into impossibly balanced shapes including, would you believe it, arches. The guide tells us that there are over a hundred of these peculiar rock formations but our lazy brand of in car tourism delivered us only to the handful of them located within viewing distance of the road. We did make the effort to walk to the double arch where we marvelled at the cavernous
Wilson Arch
Not actually located in Arches National Park, but by the road up to Moab just south of the park. rock hollow framed with a couple of large arches set at right angles to each other. Weathered into these formations by water freezing and expanding in gaps in the rock, the results of this inexorable process lie all around us. Some of the fallen rocks here and also balanced precariously on the slopes above the park road are as large as a truck. A wrong time wrong place incident would have lost us the deposit on the car and made mincemeat of its contents, so we were happy to have left the place with all large bits of rubble resting where we found it on arrival.
On the basis of rave reviews in the guide book, we travelled an uninspiring road towards the unusually named Dead Horse Point State Park. The landscape was pretty flat and dull, and we greeted every crest on the journey with anticipation, only to be disppointed every time. Failing to see how such relatively monotonous scenery could be transformed into anything worth the detour, we grudgingly handed over our $7 entrance fee and proceeded to gaze awe struck on the canyonlands view of the Colorado river carving huge terraces out of the rock 2000ft
below us. With the guide book now having paid for itself, we were treated to a wildlife bonus when cute little chipmonks started scampering around the viewing area.
We were spared any beastly repurcussions on our journey out of Utah on route 666 and were only slightly disppointed to find that our road map was not entirely up to date, the road having been renumbered to a less satanic 491. Circumstances did however deal us a small knock when we arrived at our overnight stop, the small and very full up town of Cortez in south western Colorado. Apparently there was a firefighter convention on and we didn't feel like paying the five star rates being asked for the last remaining three star motel room, even with our first time customer $10 discount. No, we chose to spend another hour on the road travelling to Durango where we payed five star rates for a very dubious one star motel room. We didn't even get a first time customer discount with this chain, though we did get free in-room odour of indeterminate yet suspicious origin. At least the free in room wi fi internet access worked well without requiring us
Mesa Verde
Pueblan village ruins nestled into the canyon side. to perch on top of the wardrobe, unlike many rooms we have stayed in.
Having travelled the road to Durango the previous day, we became very familiar with it as we ping ponged the same road another couple of times to visit Mesa Verde National Park, just outside of Cortez, then back almost to Durango to pick up our route to New Mexico. Mesa Verde is fascinating in a non-desert archaeological kind of way, which is to say it was not C's cup of tea. Shame really as you'd think that we could have dug up something special for her birthday. The area has a number of ancient Pueblan civilisation ruins tucked into the sides of canyons under huge rock overhangs. Fortunately for C we were able to view the most impressive of these, Cliff Palace, without having to join the hour long ranger guided tour, and we were soon out of there in search of warmer and more scenic terrain.
Spookily enough the scenery became more dramatic and the weather a good deal warmer precisely at the point that we left Colorado and entered into New Mexico. Our intention was to take in the intriguingly named Bisti
Balancing Rock
One of the features to be found in Arches National Park. We didn't walk too close to it. Badlands and then stop overnight in a town on the interstate further south, but we only got as far as Farmington in the north west of the state. It wasn't so much the blinding dust storm we drove very very slowly through just before reaching town, so much as the need to find breakfast so late in the day. Having suffered in the previous night's fleapit we were lured by the Marriott that sat seductively next to the Denny's we were dining in. It was after all C's birthday and the Champagne that was calling our name was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. Luckily for the bank balance the Marriott turned out to be a smoke free environment, unlike the very reasonably priced and aptly named Comfort Inn over the road. We spent the birthday evening demolishing an eclectic mix of French champagne and Californian wine whilst watching free films kindly loaned by the hotel on the in-room DVD. If you're interested we can recommend Sideways as an unusually un-Hollywood off the wall offering, but Bewitched gets a thumbs down.
For our reading entertainment we turned to The Sun, a National Enquirer type magazine where we learned, amongst other
Double Arch Approach
A long view of the double arch and neighbouring rock formations. things, that reincarnation does indeed exist and that the Bush family have stolen Geronimo's skull. Also, the end of the world is going to begin on July 14th apparently, according to the recently discovered prophecies of John the Baptist. So there you go, a more trustworthy source of information than a certain rag back home don't you think?
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