We made a fast escape from Chaco on Friday. The sky was leaden gray when we woke up, but it began to snow while we were showering, which did not bode well for the thirteen miles of dirt road. As we barreled along at 20 mph, the snow got pretty heavy, but was not melting on the road, which was the important part. Once on the highway, the snow immediately stopped and we drove up to Farmington unimpeded. We stayed in town at Mom and Pop’s Campground, pleasant enough, but surrounded by exceedingly ugly buildings. It was our first campground staring out at razor wire cyclone fences.
After stocking up, we headed to Hovenweep National Monument, another Anasazi ruins place that is out in the middle of nowhere. This group of people built houses on the edge of the canyon or on tall boulders sticking up out of the canyon. Some of these dwellings are amazing. We went on our first hike at 3:30 in the afternoon, when it was cooler (yes, suddenly it’s getting quite warm) and the light was better. We met a photographer at the end of the canyon where a lovely group of buildings are grouped. He photographed us photographing, telling us that he was shooting an article for National Parks Magazine and that it was hard to find people in good light doing stuff at the remote sites he was photographing. So our butts, bent over our cameras, may be in the summer issue of the magazine. It will cover Hovenweep, Chaco and Canyon de Chelly and his name is George Huey. Reminds me of our honeymoon, in 1989, when we spent ten days on a small boat in Alaska, and were videotaped as part of a production on Alaska. It’s only a moment, but it’s romantic, with us in silhouette, watching the sun set.
The next day we sat around in Hovenweep, enjoying the nice weather. We were going to take a 2 mile hike, but a little walking in the hot sun convinced us to cut that short, and Dave bumped over a dirt road to the Holly Ruins instead of us walking it. We hear that it’s 91in San Francisco, and are happy to be in 75-80 degree weather here.
After a short drive to Blanding, Utah, we are gearing up (shopping, filling up with water, dumping the grey and black tanks) to spend 5 or 6 days in the Needles area of Canyonlands. We will meet our friends, Don and Janet Curley there. They have a Jeep and will take us into the wilds on Saturday. We are looking forward to seeing them and the backcountry of Canyonlands.
In the meantime, tonight, we’ll see who got thrown off Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. We’ve also been able to watch HBO’s “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series. It’s great. Alexander McCall has written 7 or 8 books about Precious Ramotswe, a Botswani female detective, and the TV production really follows the novels pretty well.
