Four Corners/Navajo Indians/Petrified Forest-Day 6

Our first stop today was at the Four Corners Monument

 Her I am standing in 4 states at the same time. Utah to my left, Arizona to my back New Mexico to my right and Colorado in the front.

 Of course Buddy had to make it a little more dramatic. :)

 After leaving there we headed into Indian territory. Navajo Nation is one of the largest tribal governments of the North American territory. It covers 27,425 square miles. It is the largest land area retained by a US tribe and is managed by way of agreements by the US Congress as an sovereign Indian nation. 

 The landscape was amazing.

 Along the way, we saw this dog trying to get the goat off the road.

 We also saw lots of horses along the way. Not sure if they were wild Mustangs or the Indians owned them.

 Here are dogs herding these sheep back across the road.

 Once again we were faced with more constant changes of landscape.

 Our next stop was at the Canyon deChelly

 This is an Indian home which they call (Hogans)

 Inside

 The next few pics are of the canyons, which are very different with all the greenery below.

 Below is the ruins of a Pueblo Home.

 More wild horses

 After leaving there we were suppose to head west, but OOPS change of plans. :) We went south and ended up at the.......

 Just love not having to have set plans that you have to keep.

 Painted Desert Inn

 Part of Route 66 went through the National Park years ago.

 This is an old Studebaker that was left in the area.

 First Petrified tree we saw

 We stopped at several pulloffs and took lots of pics, but the best were at the last pull off. This part of the forest the petrified trees were filled with quartz. Pictures just don't give it justice. 

 Close up of one of the trees. They look like they would be really light, but they were like rocks.

 Unbelievable looking at part of the log and see the quartz.

 The base of the trees were pretty big.

 Tomorrow we are heading to the Grand Canyon. Hope the weather is okay. We watched storms from all around today. We stopped a little earlier than we planned tonight and glad we did, because of all the storms to the west of us.

Silverton, Durango & Mesa Verde-Day 5

Beautiful view of the Rockies on our way out this morning.

 Our first destination was to Silverton, which was an old mining town. To get there you first have to go over Red Mountain Pass which is 11,000 ft.

 The road got a little hairy in a few spots, no guard rail and drops straight down into the gorge. But once we got through the 23 miles of twists and turns we made it to Silverton.

 Still looks like an old western town.

 Look close, that says 23 miles not 3 miles

 This the view of the town after leaving and heading up the next mountain. 

 Beautiful waterfalls coming out of the mountain

 After getting over that mountain we came into Durango and stopped to eat lunch. It is a very neat town. From there we made it to Mesa Verde National Park.

 View driving up the mesa

 I won't bore you with all the details, but these are the cliff dwellings that were built by the Pueblo Indians over 700 years ago. 

 Buddy going down into one of the dwellings and next two pics are after he got down there.

 This one that we walked down to was the 3rd largest. It was called Spruce Tree House and was 216 feet long and 89 feet deep. It had 120 rooms in it.

 This was the 2nd largest dwelling.

 Didn't make it to the largest one, because it was getting late, plus it was a steep 1 mile walk to it and we didn't think our knees would make it. It was a great experience. As we were coming back down out of the park there was a rainstorm coming across below. 

Tomorrow we will be leaving the amazing state of Colorado and heading into Utah and Arizona.