(20) Visiting the Four Corners; driving through Monument Valley, Utah/Arizona and Painted Desert, Arizona

There is one place in the U.S. where four states meet: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. This place is called the Four Corners. When you go there, you can stand in the four states at the same time;) Click on the picture to read when it was established:

The Four Corners area used to belong to Mexico, from which it was acquired as a result of the 1848 American-Mexican war. Now the area belongs to the indigenous Navajo Nation and the Ute. You have to pay $3 to visit the place. The inscriptions under the names of the neighboring states suggest that it is a monument commemorating an agreement between the people inhabiting the area. The inscription goes as follows "Four States":

"Here Meet"
"In Freedom"

"Under God"

Here is what the Four Corners Monument looks like from a distance (the picture grows if you click on it):

The trip to the Four Corners allowed me to set foot in New Mexico, whose capital is Santa Fe although, as I have written elsewhere, the biggest city is Albuquerque. New Mexico is known for the biggest population of Hispanics in all U.S. states (43%).

The picture below was taken on the way to Monument Valley: note how the wind has carved blocks in the rock. I am already excited about what will come next;)

On the road to Monument Valley - the view of Dead Horse Point State Park: the beautiful red mesas make you feel as if you were entering a fairy world. Click on the picture to see all the shades of red:

Here is another breath-taking view of the wind's artistic ability to sculpt the soft rock and produce intricate shapes (click on the picture if you want):

Below is the left-hand side of the previous view from a different perspective:

Visible below is a nice meander of the San Juan River, which joins the Colorado River at Lake Powell.

And here is a classic road view of Monument Valley. The Valley, which lies on the border of Utah and Arizona, belongs to the Navajo Nation Reservation and is part of the Colorado Plateau. It is famous for the sandstone buttes, that is tall hills with vertical sides and relatively flat tops - miniature mesas, one might say;) We're driving along US 163 and approaching the Valley from the north. Click on the picture - we have still quite a distance to cover to get there:

We are approaching Monument Pass, slowly but successfully:

Natural forces (wind and rain) have eroded the land and created the wonderful sandstone formations which seem to defy gravity:

Below is another steep butte visible from the road leading now to the Painted Desert:

The Painted Desert (click on the picture) is a beautifully colored vast area of badlands, which we passed on the way from Monument Valley to Grand Canyon. The name of the desert derives from its many colors:

The Painted Desert wasn't on our itinerary, so we only drove by watching the area that looked like a multi-layered colored cake (clicking on the picture might help):

And below is the last glimpse of the beautiful desert. We are turning left now to get to Grand Canyon's South Rim. This will come next on the blog.

(19) Mesa Verde NP, Colorado

Situated in the southern part of Colorado, Mesa Verde NP allowed us to take a look at life in pre-Columbian America. Visible below is a huge mesa, that is a mountain with a flat top like a table.

The mountains offered shelter to an ancient people whom archeologists call Anasazi, which in Navajo means "the ancient foreigners". The Anasazi were originally located in the Four Corners region (next on the blog) and chose Mesa Verde for their home about 1,400 years ago, that is approximately in the year 600. Below is the picture of the largest village in Mesa Verde called Spruce Tree House:

The Anasazi lived in the area for about 700 years before they moved away in late 12 century. During the seven centuries of their Mesa Verde settlement they built communities sheltered in the stone caves of the mountains. As visible above, the Anasazi used nature to their advantage, building their dwellings under the overhanging cliffs that protected them from snow and rain and, most probably, from unexpected visitors, either human or predatory;)
Judging by the intricate alleys built for contemporary visitors, prospective ancient attackers must have found it difficult to get to the Anasazi dwelling place:

Well, if those aggressors managed to get down the cliff, they most probably died of poisoning, killed by local plants which may have served as natural "barbed wire";)

The Anasazi, ancient as they were, certainly mastered the art of architecture, which is evidenced by the remnants of their dwelling places made of sandstone. I couldn't help wondering how the hell they built such multilevel houses when they were literally hanging from the cliff...

I also had a chance to get down into a room which looked like a private family bedroom:

When I looked at the sunlit ancient blocks of flats, I concluded that the Anasazi must have spent a lot of time outside their dark alcoves in the warm sun in the open yard.

This well-shaped chamber cut in the rock may have served as a local center for religious rites and social gatherings. The hole in the middle may have been a fireplace...

Mesa Verde NP, which was created in 1906, is a surprisingly big plateau: over 30 km long and about 25 km wide. The impressive mesas are separated by deep canyons (click on the picture, it grows):

Another Anasazi dwelling - there are 600 cliff dwellings in the park, which means that quite a few Ancestral Puebloans, as they are now called, must have lived in the area. (Click on the picture to see more details)

The Anasazi were agricultural people: they hunted game on the mesa tops and grew crops there. Well, in order to function in this culture you had to be very fit: imagine a husband climbing to work in the field in the morning;)

Another Anasazi cliff dwelling:

Driving across a mesa: the trees destroyed by a fire add to the gloomy atmosphere of this long-dead settlement.

The legend below introduces tourists to the arcana of Anasazi sacral architecture (clicking on the picture might help):

A glimpse into the Sun Temple's interior:

One final shot of an amazing Anasazi village before we leave this peaceful area which was once home to a flourishing native American people (click on the picture if you want):

(18) Grand Teton NP; On the Road to Denver, Co; The Rocky Mountains

From Yellowstone I traveled south to Jackson Hole, which is a valley neighboring with the high Teton Mountains, hence the name of the park: Grand Teton NP. The area between Yellowstone and Grand Teton was donated to the Park by the Rockefeller family in 1950 (about 13 thousand hectares), so the picturesque 132-kilometer-long corridor of forests was named John D. Rockefeller Jr Memorial Parkway. Visible from a distance in the picture below are three granite towers: Grand Teton, Middle Teton and South Teton:

Grand Teton peaks are situated over huge Jackson Lake, which is the biggest of the many glacier lakes in the Park:

The upper sections of Grand Teton towers are covered with snow and ice, hence their blue-grey color. Those mountains are among the youngest ranges in the Rocky Mountains - they are about 20 million years younger than the Alps. Below them you can see the water of the Snake River (click on the picture and it grows):

The view of the valley was shot from Signal Mountain, which is situated on the other side of Jackson Lake and offers a vantage point from which to view both Grand Teton (the picture above) and the huge valleys lying to the south-east of the mountain.

Another view from Signal Mountain over the huge valley and the Snake River:

From Grand Teton NP we traveled south-east to Lander, where we spent the night. In the evening we had a substantial dinner in a local pizza restaurant and watched Michael Phelps win his seventh gold medal in swimming. When we left Lander on the next morning, the clouds looked ominous, as you can see in the picture below, and a storm seemed inevitable:

"The cloud stoops to kiss the mountain" was my diary caption for the view below. The atmosphere in the Rocky Mountains was very different from that offered by the Sierra Nevada:

Because the Rockies are so huge, a tourist relishes in admiring very diversified landscapes. The picture below was taken already in Colorado. The sunny weather promised a nice afternoon in Denver:

Unfortunately, Denver did not welcome us with sunny weather. Maybe because the city's elevation is about a mile above sea level and because it is situated practically on the borderline of the Rocky Mountains, it was cold, rainy and cloudy:

Since the weather was so unfriendly to tourists, I did not take many pictures of the city, only a snapshot or two of the City Center, which did not strike me as particularly original. Colorado advertises itself as a "colorful" state but I found the slogan misleading:

On the next morning, after we said goodbye to S, we continued our journey through the Rockies south to Cortez, which meant that we would have to cover a distance of about 690 km. In the picture below snow-covered peaks are shining far away:

The Rockies offered us an extreme experience of driving in a snowstorm in August. The flashes of lightning, the hail as big as rubble which bombarded the roof of the car, the slippery road which made it impossible to move faster than 10 miles per hour - all this made our trip in the Rockies quite dangerous and exciting (well, it actually felt exciting only after we got out of the sleet):

Such surprises caused by the weather are common in the Mountains; below you can see a ramp for trucks which get caught in snowstorms - it helps truck drivers stop the vehicle when brakes don't work on the slippery road:The Rockies are fairy mountains indeed. The picture shows the mountains after the storm: the water evaporates quickly and the steam looks like smoke from a fire:

Another snapshot of the Mountains after the rain - eerie:

Believe it or not, but the river visible below is the famous Rio Grande, the fourth largest river in the U.S. and a natural border between the U.S. and Mexico (known as the Rio Bravo there). Here it is still small, because the picture was taken very close to the River's spring, when we crossed the Rio Grande in Colorado, driving west along route 160. From here it took us a couple of hours to get to Mesa Verde NP, which will come next on the blog.