We drive through a baron landscape of not a lot until the sun begins to set and we suddenly drop down between a huge cut length of rock into the small town of Bluff. This is like many other towns in size and relative dustiness but manages to have a charm about it. One restaurant, one petrol station(that also doubles up as shop and pizzeria) and a friendly old wooden motel with tumbleweeds bounding about the car park beyond an outdoor jacuzzi lit by a trail of lights in a small garden.
The reason we're in Bluff is because the road through it leads on to the place above, Monument Valley. This place has featured in most Cowboy films over the years. Many a classic shot from any one of those films would show the enigmatic hero astride a horse with these horizontal rock formations standing up in the desert landscape behind. Thing is those very same cowboys were usually kicking up dust trying to find and fight with those belligerent Indians. How ironic that now the land is Indian owned, Navajo tribe in fact, and they're the ones charging film companies to come in and shot those type of movies. Well sort of. They don't really make em like they used to so the last major film that extensively used Monument Valley was Back to the Future 3.
Unfortunately for us the Navajo ownership also means that it's not part of the National Parks system so we can't use our annual pass and have to pay $10 to get in.
There's not a massive amount to see once you're in and driving around on the bumpy dirt road. A few classic shots and it gets a bit dull. It takes the sudden add of the foot on the accelerator and the imagination to become the late great Colin Mcrae and in a heartbeat we're now competing in the Monument Valley World Rally Championships. The competitors? The lumpy Americans in their oversized sloth-like 4 wheeled drives of course!
Leaving a trail of dust behind we drive on through some third world country looking towns until we arrive at Four Corners. This is the point in which four US states converge at one point. Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Typically the actual point is also Indian owned and you have to pay for the privilege to stand in the very spot. I wasn't that bothered and after driving a few metres into New Mexico we turn round and face the car towards Colorado.
We enter into the town of Cortez, it's probably called a city but as we now know in America that means nothing. We've passed through 'cities' with under 100 inhabitants. Cortez isn't a great looking place although it does have a great mountain backdrop but the usual line of fast food chains and obligatory huge Walmart spoil the view.
We're here to visit Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is again Spanish meaning 'Green Table'. This name is probably due to the green flat top mountains around here. You climb up into the park getting wide views of the flat plains you've left behind you. The warmth of those plains is also gone and been replaced by snow and a severe wind chill.
This area is all part of an ancient American civilisation. No-one is quite sure why these peoples left the site, I reckon it's because it's frickin cold and they hadn't invented Gore-tex to keep them dry. But they did leave behind various large dwellings, the best being the cave village behind the visitors centre.
It's a complex set of buildings and small courtyards that have survived all conditions the past few hundred years have tried to throw at the sheltered cave. In fact some of the 4000 ruins that exist here date back to around 300A.D., the latest being up to 1200A.D. and are in very good condition. Some restoration has been undertaken but not massive amounts.
It's thought that around 35,000 people, Pueblans as they like to be named here, lived around the area. It seems all the more odd when you realise only 25,000 people live here now. Where did this large population go and why?
Mesa Verde, as we read in the park newspaper, was voted the best National Park in America last year. Fair play I suppose but at the end of the day I was a bit ruined out and almost glad that some of the huge site was inaccessible due to snow.
We descend from the snowy heights of the park back down to the relatively warm plains of Colorado towards distant mountains. After a few hours these mountains are all around us as we ascend back into snow and narrow mountain passes. We have entered yet another world that couldn't be more different than the one before.
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