Life in VanMan, Part 2

I need to confess to having some difficulty adjusting to our life on the road. In my prior life, my alarm went off at 4:45 am. I hurried around doing my morning things before catching the ferry to work. I had a giant to-do list every day. There was a steady stream of people in and out of my office all day long. I received dozens of e-mails. My phone rang often. I rushed to the gym, to meetings, to lunches, to socialize with friends. Then I ran to catch the ferry home, usually in time to spend an hour with Husband and Dog before hitting the hay. 

Just like that lame cartoon game in the newspaper, "how many differences can you find between these two pictures?" What a change. We do not move at my pace. We need to stop and play ball with the Dog. We wait for Husband to take his regimen of drugs and supplements six times/day (but by the way, he is feeling better than he has in many years - doing great). We have an afternoon nap. We have no specific goals to accomplish for the day. Some days I want to scream. Other days, I think I am getting the hang of it (for this trip, at least). Mark and Ruby are easy to be with, let me be clear about that. Living in 70 square feet with the two of them is not the issue and, in fact, you learn to be respectful of another person's space, which is a good thing. 

Now that we have met my major objectives for the trip (seeing southern Utah, Durango and Ouray, CO, and we are now in New Mexico), I'm hoping that relaxing gets easier -  thus far it has taken a lot of hard work.  

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

We continued on the San Juan Skyway, which is a 236 mile loop starting and ending, in our case, in Durango. It can be done in a day, but we haven't finished yet and tomorrow will be Day 4. After leaving our remote campsite, known only to us and half the professional photographers in the western U.S., we stopped in Ridgway, another movie-set western town, to restock groceries and post a blog from the local coffee shop. From there, we visited Telluride. I don't ski, so I know less than nothing about the slopes, but between Telluride, Park City, Whistler and Jackson Hole, Telluride, as a town, unquestionably has the most character. We would have spent the night there, but since we had only traveled about 60 miles, we decided to keep going, pausing only long enough for lunch and to take a call from The Hedge Fund.


Have I mentioned the change in weather? We've experienced thunderstorms in three of the last four days and we woke up this morning to 33 degrees and crunchy grass.

Now, about Mesa Verde National Park. Even Ruby did not begrudge waiting in the VanMan while we toured through two amazing cliff dwellings. We decided to spend the night and see some more tomorrow. There are nearly 4,000 archeological sites within the park's boundaries, 600 of them cliff dwellings. One of them, called Cliff Palace, is the largest cliff dwelling in North America with 23 kivas an 150 rooms, likely housing 120 people. These dwellings probably took them 30 years to build, yet they lived in them for only 80 years and then left. It really is curious.

Durango, Colorado

Durango. I could live here. I'm not exactly sure how serious we are, but as we travel, we look for a new town to call our own. Although we love Bainbridge Island, sometimes we think it's too expensive, a bit too snooty and most of all, too gray. Wouldn't it be fun to find the perfect small town? What we think is important:  
An exceptional natural setting, whether mountain, ocean or river. Not too big, not too small. A good food coop or natural food store. At least one bookstore. A farmers market. Some artists. Good dirt and climate for gardening. A good yarn shop. And, of course, lots of sunshine. Durango scores high all around. Plus it's a college town, which is also a plus. It gets a few demerits for too many condos and golf courses and what looks suspiciously like sprawl. And we'll need to check the weather a couple months from now, but it definitely makes the List. 

We drove north from Durango on what is called the San Juan Skyway. Wow. The fall colors made the drive all the more spectacular, but it would be a big wow at any time of year. We checked out two old western towns enroute, Silverton and Ouray (first photo), which were both very cute and incredibly situated in the mountains, but also a little too touristy and too mountainous to make the List. The road and the drive need to be added to your bucket list, though, no question.

Mark was tired of campgrounds close to major thoroughfares, so he took a chance on a road that said only "National Park Access" and after a seven-mile drive down a gravel road, we found paradise. A beautiful (and free) campground complete with a meadow and a creek, a trailhead and only a couple of other campers spread over many acres. As if we needed further evidence of the spectacular beauty of this spot, a surprising number of photographers came and went (how did they know - maybe it's in a book somewhere?) working to shoot the green meadow, yellow leaves, white bark, soaring mountains and the new snow on the rocky peaks. Again, my camera doesn't do it justice, but I'll remember.

Update: VanMan was evidently in the way of a perfect shot of Mt. Sneffels, so one of the photographers asked us to move In exchange for a 16x24 inch print of the result. Oh boy!