Day 29: Friday 23-Jul-1999

Base Camp: Arch View, Moab, Utah

Excursions: Four Corners Monument, Cortez (Colorado), Mesa Verde National Park (Colorado)

Distance: 420mi (672 km)

We got up early today and ate breakfast in the truck as we were driving to our next spot: Four Corners. Before leaving on this trip from NH, we had talked about our trip as being in the Four Corners area. It took us about 3 hours to get there from Moab. You have to drive through an Indian reservation to get there. This corner also appears to have some oil finds, as you can see oil pumps working around you. It is curious how you also see a web of power lines where they put the pumps. Curious because these power poles appear in high desert where nobody lives. The actual Four Corners monument is inside the Indian reservation and we had to pay $6 to see it and to use their Port-a-Potties. Around the monument are plenty of small stands, where local Indians sell hand craft, food and T-shirts. Basically, the Four Corners monument is a tourist trap barely worth the journey. There is nothing else around it for miles and miles and it is located in high desert with no particular scenic views. We took the customary pictures and left.

	Four Corners monument, marking the place where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet.

	Izzy in Utah, Lillemor in Arizona, Erik in Colorado and Karl in New Mexico (both boys waving their Indian Kokopeli dolls).

We had a backup plan. We had heard about Cortez in Colorado, which is about an hours drive from there. Actually, Pam Bleakney told us about it. We had forgotten why Pam said we ought to visit the town, but we were so let down by Four Corners we decided to at least try to make something out of the day. As we approached the town, something caught Lillemor's eyes: an Airstream. Not just any Airstream. An Airstream converted into a coffee shop. It had a neon sign above calling itself Silver Bean. It is located on the outside of town just as you hit the 666 intersection. We just had to stop and take a picture. A sign invited you to just Come In.

We walked in to meet Gigi, who owns and operates this little shop. She was very nice to talk to and had plenty of different cold and hot drinks to offer. Some of the interiors had been removed, such as the rear beds, to make room for a larger kitchen. This was, after all, a semi-stationary coffee shop. We sat down in the original couch and enjoyed what we ordered. Gigi was also a Airstream fun, she owns a another airstream from the 60:s. She showed us a magazine Life from 1970 when Airstream International was in Hershley, PA. Erik stuffed himself with cookies. A sign noted: maximum 16 cookies per customer. We laughed, but were at the same time concerned that Erik had blown the limit. On the outside of the trailer was a sign for drive-thru. Yes, you could even drive around it an order through what used to be the rear bedroom window. How cute. We would certainly recommend a visit there, if you are in the area.

	Gigi's "Silver Bean" outside of Cortez, Colorado. Notice the Drive Thru sign (under Open), the yellow arrow on the ground and the customer parked behind the trailer, waiting to be served through the bedroom "drive-up" window.

After this uplifting experience, we drove off to the town's visitors center. We learned about the Mesa Verde National Park, which starts about 10 miles away from the visitors center in town. We drove out there. Once you are through the gates, there is a quite long and steep climb up to the start of the ruins. The southern tip of the park is about 19 miles from the gates, so it took a little while to get up there. We had a picnic packed in our cooler. We used the small picnic area near the parking, a bit in the woods. I was quite nice. Even though there were plenty of people up at the parking, we barely saw or heard people from the picnic area. After we had eaten, we walked back to the truck and put the lunch things into it. We then walked down to the viewpoint, which is a rather short walk. The view was nice. We could see people down there listening to a presentation by a Park Ranger. We also wanted to get down, despite the steep climb down there. Unfortunately, you have to buy tickets and take a guided Park Ranger tour. We guess they did this to protect the ruins. Tickets were being sold at the visitor center (at the beginning of the park) for tours. The next tour was in 2 hours, we did not want to wait that long. We could also see the afternoon rain clouds of this season start to build up and we could hear thunder too.

	A view of the Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park. A crowd of people are standing down there listening to a presentation by a Park Ranger.

We decided to continue along the road in the park and see if we could visit other ruins. Same thing there. We needed a guided Park Ranger tour. This park is nice enough that when/if we get back to this area, and the kids are a bit older, we should take one or two of the guided tours into the Canyon. Rain clouds were now even more apparent and we decided to start our drive home. We drove through rain on our way down through the windy park road. On our way out of Cortez we drove by a large junk yard with old cars parked in a field. Must be a gold mine for those interested in restoring old cars. The trip home was uneventful. We took a different route home and stayed on the Colorado side for a while before we got back into Utah.

As we returned into Moab we stopped for dinner at a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet book: Rio Colorado. They served Mexican food. It was good. The kids got to order drinks. Sweet-tooth Erik ended up with one rootbeer float and a large Coke, before dinner. No wonder he had a hard time eating up his kid's size plate. But this was our last Friday so we allowed certain exceptions. During this trip Isabella has started to order adult meals instead of from the kid's menu. She ate a Navajo Taco, which she liked.

	Sunset view from our campground outside of Moab. Only thing close to the campground was Arches National Park, a couple of miles down the road.

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