Day 7 -- Cortez to Bayfield, Colorado by way of Hovenweep -- 154 miles

This morning we got up, had breakfast, got the rig ready to roll, and basically had no idea where we were going. In my mind we had three choices: we could go south into New Mexico and visit the premier archaeological site of Hovenweep; in the opposite direction -- sort of -- we could go east and visit the simply outstanding Mesa Verde site where you saw where the cliff dwellers lived; or we could bypass both per-Columbian history sites and drive straight on to Durango, Colorado where one could visit the pioneer west of the 1870s and that most famous steam train in the west, the Durango and Silverton. What to do?

After the rig was buttoned up and ready to go, Concetta announced she wasn't quite ready to hit the road. "That's okay," I said. "I'm going down to the office to see if they have facilities to fill our propane tank." And so I did. I forgot to mention that when we pulled into the most excellent RV camp in Cortez, Colorado yesterday called the "Sundance," I discovered that the desk clerk had lived a huge chunk of her life about fifteen miles from me in the town of Gardnerville, Nevada. Now she lives in New Mexico and comes to Cortez during the summers to reside somewhere cooler and earn a little cash. This morning when I dropped by the office the clerk was chatting with a older lady in a ridiculously floppy hat who, when I mentioned that the clerk and I had lived in the same place, got real excited and said that she also was from Gardnerville, Nevada and had lived there for the past three decades.

After further questioning the woman, whose name was Maple, told me that she was in Cortez looking for a new place to live, but she also had been looking in my own neighborhood of Jacks Valley near Carson City. How's that for coincidence? At any rate, we three got into a lively discussion -- while Concetta waited semi-patiently back at the RV -- about the best places to live and the best places to visit, and pretty soon I was asking their advice on whether or not to go to Hovenweep or to move on east. "Well," they both chorused, they were planning to go to Hovenweep themselves that day, and they thought it was just simply beautiful, both the destination and roads out there.

"Roads?" I said.

"Sure," they said, and told me that you can go out one road and return on another and it's just simply a terrific drive.

And so it was that after a futile attempt to find propane further down the road at a spot suggested by the RV park clerk, Robin, we headed on out to Hovenweep to see what we could see. It was forty-five miles out there, and forty-five miles back, and the roads were twisty-turny as they could be. But the scenery was just wonderful, full of small farms, and tin-roofed homesteads, and wandering bands of horses and cows. Roads like that are seldom maintained to modern standards, and more than once the dishes in the dish cupboard rattled like crazy, but the vistas were wondrous and beautiful. No pix for y'all, on this stretch, but then there was nowhere to pull off that wasn't either somebody's driveway or much too tiny for a 31-foot rig to fit.

Before long, however, we made a turnoff at the suggestion of a little brown sign that directed us to "turn right" to Hovenweep. Running along this stretch, on a road that was in even worse shape then the last one, we soon came upon an unbeatable opportunity for a little photography. Though there was absolutely no fences on either side of the road to retain any sort of livestock, we found a herd of horses just sort of lounging around waiting for the next pickup-load of hay, no doubt.

I slowed way down to a crawl so we wouldn't either alarm them or cause them to come onto the road thinking we were the hay truck. Actually, I think they didn't care one way or the other. For awhile I just shot a few frames out the window of the rig, not knowing whether they'd gang up on me if I got out. But then Concetta and I hit on the idea of luring them over with some genuine Jacks Valley carrots, a sack of which we had brought along on our adventure.

Well, the horses showed all the interest in the carrots as your average Republican would show in a Bernie Sanders rally. That is, they sort of glanced in my direction as I tossed the carrots as near as I could then went back to "resting." Good thing the carrots weren't hand grenades, because the whole herd would have been history. But in the end I did manage to get a carrot so close to one horse that his curiosity kicked in and he ambled over to see what had just landed in his world. Then he nudged it a bit. And finally he took a chomp and went to crunching (photo 2).

I looked intently to see if the horses would notice that their fellow had scored a treat, but they paid no mind. And the subject carrot-eater didn't let on that he was heir to something special. Since I was not prepared to let good Jacks Valley carrots go to waste -- the ones I had thrown without stirring up any equine interest -- I got out of the truck and went and retrieved them. Then I lobbed them much closer to where the group was standing. They didn't take much notice even then, but we assumed that sooner or later they'd be asking the nibbler just what he was nibbling on. After that we continued our journey to Hovenweep.

Once we discovered the object of our search we found a nice level spot for the RV -- RVs are cranky if you don't keep the fridge level or nearly so -- and then we trekked into the wonderful visitor center. We watched the twenty-minute film, browsed the book collection, and read all the history behind the discovery of Hovenweep.

I had known about the site since I was a kid, but had never tried to go there. The amazing thing is the place was found by the Mormons in 1854, and further explored in the 1870s. These same Mormons eventually settled the community that we visited yesterday in southern Utah called Bluff. Amazing co-incidence.

Hovenweep is a Paiute/Ute Indian word meaning deserted, though it was far from deserted today in view of all the tourists who had somehow found the place. The overcast skies didn't especially make for good photography since everything suffered from lack of shadows and definition. Still we walked the paths of the ancients and absorbed as much of the history as we could. The heyday of Hovenweep was around the 1200s. After that, like many of the vanished peoples once known as the Anasazi, the climate changed and the many canyon and cliff-dwelling tribes moved to other locations. These peoples are now thought to have become the pueblo peoples further to the south.

After purchasing the obligatory Hovenweep T-shirt, and an armload of books on geology and local flora, we made our exit and headed back to Cortez using the alternate route. This route, which runs more to the north, is not quite as interesting, well, unless you just adore miles of rolling farm land, but the road still landed us back in Cortez about forty-five miles later. I might mention that the resident ranger person at Hovenweep listened to my questions about the probable geology along Route 162 from yesterday's travels and vehemently proclaimed that my rock sample was definitely sandstone and not limestone, as very little limestone is found in that area. Sigh!

After gassing up the rig, we headed east toward Durango, Colorado and found a camp about 18 miles beyond Durango in the community of Bayfield. For some reason the GPS took this opportunity to play with us and had us going hither and yon on a bevy of incorrect streets before it settled down and delivered us to our destination. We rolled into the Riverside RV Park on the Pine River in Bayfield about cocktail hour, and I marched up to the office. No one was there to meet me. Well, okay, I next took the advice of a small sign at the entrance to "find your own spot" and tell them later. Okay, will do.

Picking our way through the park I found a nice spot which promised to have all the utilities I needed and was about to slide right in when a park employee popped into view. I stopped the truck, jumped out, and said, "Well, your sign said to just park it and let you know later."

"That would be fine if we had any spaces left," the young woman said.

"No spaces?" I said.

"Got a travel club coming in," she said. "But let's check and see. Drive back to the office and I'll meet you there."

This we did, and miraculously by the time we pulled up to the office the lady was just arriving herself. "Just got a cancellation call on the phone," she said. "We should be able to park you after all."

It turned out that if the cancellation hadn't come in at just that exact second, we would have had to go on down the road because ALL the spaces were spoken for. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Davis luck at work.

Fortuitously, the park lady put us in a space that just happened to be next to the most garrulous and friendly human on earth. He and I spent so much time talking while I was setting up that the ice in my cocktail had melted and Concetta was beginning to wonder if she was going to see me at all. But as I told her, if I didn't talk to my fellow RVers I wouldn't learn some valuable stuff on how to survive the road while making it look easy. This afternoon I learned a handy trick on how to keep your RV generator's carburetor from going to hell, as well as some tidbits on the advisability of using a "power regulator" on your incoming power source to keep the park from zapping your electrics and a lightning strike from blowing things up even worse. Advice like that is worth its weight in gold.

So tomorrow I hope to pay the town of Durango a visit before we head on down to one of my favorite places on earth, that of Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Whether or not we actually end up there time will only tell. But until then, I wish you happy traveling.