Grand Canyon and Southwest Colorado

About ten days ago, we left LA and headed east to start this next chapter of our van travels. It was nice to get out of California as gas dropped from over $7 gallon to less than $5 gallon in Arizona (see photo below). We decided to spend a couple nights in the Grand Canyon since it was on the way to Colorado. It was actually my third visit to the Grand Canyon in the past few years but that's fine by me as being in the Grand Canyon never gets old. Ginny and I did a couple short hikes along the rim together and I did a 18 mile trail run down to Phantom Ranch while Ginny hiked down South Kaibab trail to Skeleton Point. 

After our visit to the Grand Canyon, we drove northeast and headed right through the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado as we left Arizona and entered Colorado. We started seeing marijuana dispensaries and micro breweries left right and center once we got into Colorado. We visited Mesa Verde National Park where there any many cliff dwellings from the Ancestral Pueblo people. They were mysteriously abandoned by the end of the 1200s for unknown reasons. Cliff Palace which contained 150 rooms and 23 kivas was my personal favorite but all of the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde are truly spectacular! They also reminded me of the Lothal cliff dwellings from Star Wars which must have been inspired by these cliff dwellings.  

After Mesa Verde, we drove on to Durango which has a great historic downtown area complete with, you guessed it, lots of microbreweries and dispensaries. Durango felt like what you'd get if you took my hometown of Northampton, MA and put it in the Rocky Mountains. Lots of health food stores, cafes, outdoor shops and they even had a store where you could rent campervans! We spent the night outside of Durango on BLM land and spent the next morning checking out Pagosa Springs which is about an hour east of Durango. Pagosa has tons of natural hot springs and while there are a number of commercial hot spring resorts, you can also just go down to the river and soak in the hot springs there for free. It was pretty cool, I mean hot, and you certainly can't beat the price of admission!

The next stop on our southwest Colorado tour was Del Norte which doesn't get the fanfare of some of its neighbors but it was one of our favorite Colorado cities so far. It's a small town in the San Luis Valley that has a charming downtown with a honey shop, local bakery, several cafes, health food store, microbrewery and several restaurants. The town allows campervans to spend one night in the city park by the river so we gladly took them up on the offer - thank you very much, City of Del Norte! They also have lots of trails around town including a very steep one that goes straight up Lookout Mountain. 

The past couple days we've been in Salida and Buena Vista which are hands down our favorite spots of the trip so far. While some of the towns around here seem stuck in the past (saloons, wild west shops and the like), Salida is very hip and trendy so provides lots of great window shopping and people watching. For instance, while we were having dinner the other night, a guy dressed up in a giraffe costume road by us on his bicycle! Buena Vista is a little smaller and more laid back but still has a nice little downtown area with shops, cafes and a friendly woolly mammoth hanging out on the main street. Both towns are on the Arkansas River which has great whitewater activities as well as some excellent boondocking spots (see photo from our site last night). 

Now we're in Colorado Springs for a few days checking on our rental properties, two of which we've never seen before so we're hoping for the best!  After being out in the mountains for a while, it's nice to be in an urban area and are looking forward to exploring Colorado's second biggest city.