We stayed several days at Mesa Verde. It’s location is convenient to a lot of places with photographic potential. We visited Durango, Silverton, Ouray, Ridgway, Delores, and the Needles portion of Canyonlands National Park. We also took a ride on the train from Durango to Silverton.

I mentioned that people live in the canyon, but they are not the first inhabitants. People have lived here for hundreds (thousands?) of years, as they have throughout the American Southwest. There are ancient pueblos scattered throughout the canyon. It’s a bit of a challenge photographing them from the canyon rim, but we managed to get a few OK shots.

It was mostly sunny, but the ground was wet, wet enough that the woman at the kiosk by the visitors center told us that the steep dirt road to the valley was not safe for anything but four-wheel-drive vehicles. I had already seen deep new ruts in Kayenta, so I was ready to believe her. We took what pictures we could around the visitors center and left.

The North Rim is very different than the South Rim. It’s remote. It’s far less Crowded. It doesn’t have a single drive along the rim. Instead it has roads, sometimes long roads, to viewpoints. We explored the viewpoints with paved roads. Some of them had a little walk, but nothing most people couldn’t do.

We visited from the East Entrance, near Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation. It’s far less crowded than the South Entrance and a lot more pleasant. There is a 25 mile road from the East Entrance to the Village. It has great view and lots of turnouts.

Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve share a border, but it’s difficult to imagine two more dissimilar places in such close proximity. Part of the difference is elevation.

This was a different type of trip for us. Joyce and I didn’t travel west together. She flew and met up with her sisters. I met them in Kingman Arizona where Joyce and I began the real trip. It was also a long trip, 6,069 miles over 19 days.

It was an excellent trip. We had a great time.

Go to Huntington Beach State Park.  Enjoy the place and the animals, but give the animals their room, especially the turtles, the water moccasins, and the alligators.

The masters move smoothly with control and grace, flow.  The early part of the defense might be a block, a parry, maybe just a step aside.  They usually end with a sudden application of impeccably timed force.