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Utah - Colorado - A corner of New Mexico

Monday we drove from Salt Lake City to Monticello, Utah for the night. Tuesday morning J and I went to the Monticello Temple.

Then we went to Four Corners!  We hadn't been there for over a decade, J and S didn't remember it at all.  Driving from Monticello to Four Corners meant we went from Utah through the other three states.


 For whatever crazy reason, there wasn't a New Mexico state line sign!




Wednesday we went to Canyons of the Ancients.  There is an amazing visitor center, plus lots of sites you could visit, in better weather for the most part because there were either dirt roads or hiking trails to most of them.

J (and S for a little bit) spent over an hour weaving on the Navajo loom and J really wants us to get a smaller version of one.

Then we drove up to Lowry Pueblo.  We were a little TOO adventurous, it was snowy dirt road for the last half mile.

You can actually go inside, the roof in the picture above is over the main part of the pueblo that is the most preserved.  There is a metal structure holding the roof up and you can go into a small room that leads to this bigger room: 

Outside was this large kiva

Then we drove over to Mesa Verde.  We are in SUCH off season that this was the closest we got to the Cliff Palace, the most famous of the structures at Mesa Verde.  We did get to see quite a few structures and the beauty of the Mesa Verde area as we drove through.

Thursday we went to the Durango & Silverton Railroad to see their museum in the roundhouse.  It had been about a decade since we had been there too,



We went to see the OTHER Chimney Rock. Every time I googled the one in Nebraska, I kept getting results for this one. Look carefully, it's off to the left of the sign, a little stack of rock sticking up.  This was also closed for winter. When you go during tourist season, you get to tour a lot of pueblos and kivas up by Chimney Rock.

Friday we went to Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve.  It was jaw-dropping to see these massive sand dunes at the base of some pretty impressive mountains


We tried hiking up a little dune, it would be a 5 hour trek to hike Star Dune, the tallest one of the entire dunes system which are also the largest dunes in North America

We headed into New Mexico

But because of the government shutdown, were unable to see the one National Park site we wanted to see, Capulin Volcano National Monument.

We are rethinking where we are headed to next, because of the shutdown.  Most of our destinations were National Parks, although there is a lot we can still see in spite of the shutdown.  Stay tuned!

We attended the Raton branch, Pueblo Colorado stake on Sunday.  It was just sacrament meeting and we had Santa talk to us, for real! The speakers were an older couple, the man played Santa for years and still had his full, white beard.  We also sang a lot of Christmas hymns.  It was a very festive service!

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