We were sad to say goodbye, but we left Mesa Verde early in order to park sprint through a few other places. We had the typical morning send off from some mama deer with little babies eating breakfast in the campground fields. We drove through more non-descript little towns and eventually stopped to use the restroom in Dove Creek, Colorado. From the outside, this place looked like the typical small town gas station we’ve seen many times; however, inside it were a grocery store (complete with produce!) and a packed “restaurant” – there were about 15 people sitting in the back eating “breakfast”! We never really know what we’re going to find in these small towns! Our trip wasn’t that far today, we were only going about 200 miles and the weather was a little overcast, making it a pleasant drive. On these secondary highway drives, we often see the same sights: small, quaint towns (we rate them as either ‘I could live here’, ‘I could live here if all my friends and family lived here’, or ‘hell noooo – don’t make me live here!’); dried up rivers and lakes (we see this everywhere!) and nearby thirsty livestock; completely deserted, run-down towns; and a lot of road kill (Deven likes to say “just sleeping” when we go by dead animals in the road). We’ve seen squirrels, raccoons, skunks, snakes, deer, and today we were very sad to see a large bear on the side of the road. As we continued to drive away from the small towns and toward our destination, we started seeing more and more red rock formations and small arches in the sandstone. We drove straight through Moab, a place we originally thought we would spend some time in; however, with the overcast weather and upon realizing this is a town mostly suited for 4-wheelers and hard core mountain bikers – we just took it all in from the car. A few miles down the road, we were at Arches National Park. We were not thrilled about being here and were already having withdrawals after leaving Mesa Verde, but we quickly changed our minds and started “oohing and aahing” about the unique terrain. We stopped at the Visitor Center and then made our way through the park, marveling at how different this place is from any other place we’ve seen. We headed straight for the hike to Delicate Arch. On a typical day here, we would’ve been crazy to start this hike during the middle of the day due to the heat. Thankful for the clouds and cooler temperature (it was still hot!), we headed out with our backpacks full of water. This strenuous hike took us up and over a huge sandstone boulder, through red sand, and had absolutely zero shade. Near the end of the hike, we accidentally lost the trail and conquered a slightly dangerous cliff that had us literally clinging to the side of the rock. We arrived safely and enjoyed a snack near this iconic arch. We read up on how water and ice, extreme temperatures, and underground salt movement sculpted the scenery in this park. 100 million years of erosion have created this park, considered the world’s greatest density of natural arches. There are 2000+ catalogued arches in the park, with openings ranging from 3 feet to 300 feet. While sitting near this arch, we watched the 2 ravens nearby, bragged to ourselves about how adventurous we were to take the alternative route (by accident), and noticed how many people at the top of the trail were not American. There are so many foreigners at this park, definitely outnumbering the Americans. We made our way back down the actual trail, which was much easier than our alternative route, and had lunch. We then made our way to another trailhead to hike to Landscape Arch, another trail that was packed with worldly visitors. After this hike, we drove back through the park – stopping to take pictures of some of the roadside arches. From here, we headed to nearby Canyonlands National Park. Neither of us had ever heard of this place and we weren’t sure what to expect. Only about 10 miles down the road from Arches, the landscape is surprisingly very different. This park is very small compared to the other parks we’ve been in and the main road is only about 17 miles. We weren’t thrilled about this place and we decided to quickly see the highlights…until we stopped at the first overlook. We were amazed by the sight of what we saw while overlooking nearly 100 miles of canyons. We finally started realizing why this part of the park is called Islands in the Sky. We also began to understand what Canyonlands is all about. Over time, the flow of the Colorado River has created hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, and arches. To look down on these canyons is an amazing sight and we were both thankful that we made time to stop here. We took a short hike to Mesa Arch, which was also crowded with European visitors and drove to a few outlooks for more photos. This was the shortest amount of time we’ve been in any park (besides the Badlands, but we don’t really count that place) and I took more pictures here than any other park, even though the photos don’t really capture the dramatic landscapes. All 12 sites in the campground were full, but we found a great, new campground a few miles outside of the park. Our site at Horsethief campground had an amazing view that stretched for miles and we were settled in early to make a yummy dinner and watch the sunset. We both loved this quiet, nearly-empty campground…until the invasion of the crazy, flying, insect-like invaders. One of these “attacked” Deven on our first night at Mesa Verde and we’ve been scared of them ever since. We can’t really see them because they only come out at night, but they seem like a cross between a dragonfly and a very large mosquito (Deven says they’re more like a cross between a moth, drangonfly, and bat) and they come out of nowhere and will fly right into your face/head and they totally freak us out! We had just finished dinner and I was starting to do the dishes when one slammed into Deven’s head. She started freaking out and I took off to hide in the Sprinter. I wanted to finish cleaning up, but it wasn’t safe to go outside. We were hiding inside the Sprinter laughing/freaking out because we could hear them flying into the sides of the van – they were after us. I started saying nice things about them, hoping that reverse psychology would entice them to leave us alone. That didn’t work, so I asked Deven if I could use the extra bug screen scraps to make a guard for my face, but then we finally came up with a solution – I put on the scooter helmet! I flipped down the face guard, pulled my hood up over the helmet and headed back out into the danger zone. Deven was more brave than I and she went out with just a baseball hat. Every time we heard one flying around, we’d both run back into the sprinter for protection. It took us about 30 minutes to do what should’ve taken 5, but we were eventually safe inside. We were still laughing and I was sweating from wearing so many layers and the helmet, but we were just thankful to have survived another night without any further attacks.
