Cortez Days Inn

... floor" of the soul where we are all very needy & human.   There was not a trace of bitterness in any native American person we have encountered.  What we have all in varying degrees received & learned from them & their spirituality is the deep inter-connectedness they lived out with the natural world-they & we are "people of the earth."  The ...

... at the Colorado river where it cuts through the Canyon in a place where it has carved an enormous horseshoe-shaped bend. The walk up to the "viewpoint" from the parking area was misleadingly advertised as being just a quarter of a mile. Easy. Except it wasn't. Easy that is. I am sure it was probably only that distance, but we had to scale a high sand-dune to get there and the loose, red sand slipped away with every footfall, making the ...

... that individuals are taking donations for their own use. The wording is not able to be altered to reflect any other purpose. This is apparently creating some confusion as to what the donations are going to be used for. I am capturing donations not for my own purposes but for the Wounded Warriors Project. So please pay no attention to the wording or the PayPal links under "Support my Travels" just read it as "Support my Charity". I hope this helps resolve any confusion. Joe

... by the CCC in the 1930s and is about 75% original. The hike out of Cliff Palace had two features that did not endear themselves to Deb. First is an irregular staircase cut up through a thin channel carved in the rock. When you reach the top, you then had to ascend three ten foot ladders, with the last rising up an exposed rock face, 100 foot in the air. Deb's acrophobia was in full swing! We safely made ...

... the car! We decided to go on 3 tours guided by rangers. The rangers led us to the cliff dwellings long house, balcony house and cliff palace. These villages were built about 1000 years ago by anasazi indians (today they're called ancestral puebloans). About 800 years ago they left theis villages probably because of a drought. To get to these cliff dwellings we had to climb 10 meter long ladders, crawl through tunnels and climb the cliff. It was worth it though!

The sun rose on a very cold and windy morning in Cortez. I turned on the television to see whether the previous night's forecast had come true. Sure enough, it was 36 degrees outside at that moment. The strong wind made it feel like 17 degrees. The only good side to the weather was that there were no clouds in the sky. We wouldn’t have to trudge through rain or snow. But, it was still going to be a difficult time hiking in Mesa Verde considering the ...

The sun was shining brightly through our windows when we woke up. All traces of the storm that had gently disturbed the area over the past couple of days were gone. Instead, we were greeted by the incredible sunlight that always seems to bathe high altitude cities. We got ready for the day and packed our belongings in preparation for another driving day. It would also be the day when we started making our way back to California. While heading home is always something of a sad ...