Miles Tuesday: 237
Hours in the saddle: 8:42
Tuesday marks the beginning of the Colorado era. There was lots more we wanted to see and do in Arizona, but our trip falling during a drought & heat wave just made it too hot.
So we began our last journey across the Arizona desert this morning and had a quick lunch at a Subway in a small town. The wind was really strong today. There were at least two times that it physically altered our course and we had to lean back in to it and recover.
We were looking forward to the Four Corners monument, but when we turned off for it, it just looked sad so we declined to pay $5 ea to see 4 flags that were not fluttering in the breeze and kept going. We needed a break but it was another 15 miles before we saw anything at all, making that run about 90 miles total without stopping (which is on the higher side). We found what ended up being a closed visitor center with bars on the windows. It used to be a gas station, so there was shade at least.
We continued on and ran in to a monsoon. It was pretty intense at first. It definitely contained hail, but the pieces were not as big as in the monsoon we hit on the north side of the Grand Canyon.
We made our way to Mesa Verde, our camping destination for the night. There was a very large sign stating that marijuana was not allowed in the park (MJ is legal in CO now). However, they sold alcohol in the camp store. The drive up in to the mountains was gorgeous.
The campground had wifi, and it was better than at the Lake Powell Resort. IJS. It also had one communal bear box per loop. In CA there were bear boxes at every site – I had no idea that it was such a luxury! The trees were too short to throw a bear bag. Anyway, no one else was using the communal bear box.
We had a backpacker dinner and slept really well. It’s nice that the temperature is reasonable so that we can actually camp.
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