“Wow, Look At That! Whoa, Look At THAT!!”

We’ll have more to say about Santa Fe in a future post, but the news of the moment is that we left there Wednesday to drive to Cortez, CO, where Ginny’s cousin, Kelly McAndrews, and her family live.

The first couple of hours of the drive were ho-hum, but it was comforting to know that if we got into an accident with the Iz, local legal counsel was available to us.

When we got to Farmington, NM in northwestern New Mexico, we made a navigation goof.  By looking only at Google Maps and not our big National Geographic atlas, we didn’t realize we were only 20 miles from the Four Corners (the border point of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado).

But as we crossed into Colorado…

…the scenery turned dramatically better.

As US 491 skirted the Mesa Verde National Park, we started seeing one amazing rock formation after another.

After a warm, welcoming evening at the McAndrews’s horse farm (and trying to keep Roxy away from the horses), and a tour of the nearby Canyons Of The Ancients Monument and Museum (to which Kelly, an archaeologist, has contributed significant research) Friday morning…

…plus seeing photos of a couple of guys with a centurys-old view of the world, which were stuck in a back corridor of the (federally-funded) museum, next to the rest rooms…

we were off to Utah.

As we neared Moab, our first stop, the scenery got beautifully distracting.  It also got very red – they don’t call it the Utah Red Rock Country for nothing!  It was tough to be the driver because there was so much to take in.

During the next 10 days, we will visit Canyonlands, The Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks.

We’re also having the stupendous luck of being in Moab at the time of a big ATV race/rally.  We knew something was up when we saw a police escort down Highway 191 for 10 or 12 of the things as we drove into town Friday.  We’ve quickly learned that all ATVs have big tires, no mufflers, tall orange flags on spring-loaded poles, some other splash of bright color somewhere and dudes with goatees driving them.  They cruise by our RV campsite every five minutes or so, with predictable effect on peace and quiet.  But, as Ginny reminds me as she edits this, it’s one of the nicest RV parks we’ve found yet.