Mancos, CO & Mesa Verde NP

Day #89 (October 28, 2022): We have enjoyed our time in Colorado Springs. And although we have seen and done a lot, we have left many things for another visit, such as Pikes Peak (aka America’s Mountain whose views from its top inspired the song “America the Beautiful”), Manitou Incline, Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine Tour, Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum, as well as many, many other family-friendly attractions that we simply didn’t have enough time for. This is a fantastic place to visit and one worthy of being added to any family’s list of vacation destinations.

We continued west across the beautiful state of Colorado to its southwest corner, admiring snow-capped mountains skirted with yellow grasslands, and parked at Riverwood RV Park in Mancos, CO, near Durango.

Day #90 (October 29, 2022): While staying at the hotel in Denver, Emily picked up a flyer in the hotel lobby about an app called GyPSy Guide (now called GuideAlong). Intrigued, she researched the app which offers GPS-guided tours of many national parks and other popular destinations, many that we just visited in our Northwest loop. Rats! Oh well, next time! LOL!

Today is our first opportunity to try out GyPSy Guide (GuideAlong) in Mesa Verde National Park. The narrator, Dave Pettitt, does a fantastic job of not only telling you all sorts of fun and interesting facts and stories about what you are seeing out your car windows, he does an amazingly accurate job of navigating you throughout the entire park! He even gives great recommendations about restaurants along your drive and various hikes based on your interests, abilities, and time allowances. It’s an app that is very, very well done. We are looking forward to more adventures with Mr. Dave!

We started our morning at the national park’s visitor center. Unfortunately, the tours of the cliff dwellings, where you can tour the inside of the cliff dwellings (how cool is that!), stopped for the season last weekend. Aww man, so close! These tours are very popular and need to be reserved in advance. Good to know! Even without a ranger-guided inside tour of the cliff dwellings, we had an amazing time as Mr. Dave narrated our drive through the park. The cliff dwellings, especially Cliff Palace, are so cool to see from a distance; we’ve got to come back some day to climb inside and see them up close. Bucket list noted! How the Ancestral Pueblo people carved their houses (really they are little towns or communities) out of the sides of the sandstone cliffs is ingenious and resourceful! What talent and skill!

Our favorite adventure of the day was the Petroglyph Point Trail, a 2.4-mile loop trail on the ancient path just below the canyon’s rim. As we hiked, we looked for evidence of the Ancestral Puebloans (aka the Anasazi), such as carved steps, wall remnants in small alcove, carved pictures on a petroglyph panel, and sharpening slicks (where they slid a stick or other stone tools in the sandstone to sharpen the tools leaving behind a carved deep grooved line in the rock). Along the trail, the kids found multiple hollowed-out spaces that looked like perfect places to spend the night in the side of the cliff! This place is so cool! We climbed the steep hand-carved steps to the top of the “green mesa” (for which the park is named) and walked the final third of the loop through an old-growth pinyon-juniper forest.

That evening, we ate at Cavalo’s Mexican Restaurant in Mancos for some yummy Mexican food. The sunset during dinner made the sky, clouds, and snow-capped mountains glow with the brightest glow of orange! It was truly spectacular! Thank you, God and Mr. Dave, for an amazing day at Mesa Verde National Park.

Day #91 (October 30, 2022): Another restful Sunday! Yes!! We enjoyed virtual church in the morning, and in the afternoon the kids enjoyed riding the Onewheel on the flat, paved roads of the RV park. Now, this is a perfect place to practice the OneWheel! Woo-hoo! That night, Chris and the girls went to the small town’s Trunk or Treat at the Mancos Community Center. It was a “sweet” glimpse into simple, small town living with about 6 car trunks and a small room (just a little bigger than our RV) with a handful of simple carnival games.

Day #92 (October 31, 2022): Today, we drove through a Ute Reservation to the Four Corners Monument so we could take our turn being in 4 states at the same time! We discovered upon arrival that the Four Corners Monument is on a Navajo reservation (entrance fee is charged FYI). We took turns standing in the four states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico at the same time! We shopped at the various booths around the monument, buying a Christmas ornament to add to our Christmas ornament souvenir collection. We ate Navajo tacos and fry bread from one of the food trucks on site. They were both delicious. The fry bread reminded us of funnel cakes. We realized later that while we were here, we should have driven through the iconic Monument Valley, which was only about an 1.5 hours further. Rats! Next time!

That night, the girls put their Halloween costumes on again to go Trick or Treating in the nearby, slightly larger town of Cortez, CO. We trick-or-treated at the local church of Christ and then walked up and down a couple streets in the same neighborhood. Little did we know, this was a VERY busy place for trick-or-treaters! Homeowners pretty much just stayed on their front porches because the groups of trick-or-treaters were so frequent. Families and groups merged together, and it was like being in a parade of trick-or-treaters! We had never seen so many trick-or-treaters in such a small area before!

Day #93 (November 1, 2022): After morning music lessons, Emily and the kids drove into the city of Durango. We “popped” into the Durango Soda Factory for an impromptu tour, per their website’s recommendation. We were greeted by the owner, Banden Zuber, who was very kind and welcoming. His small team was on lunchbreak, so the machines weren’t running at that moment, but he took the time to show us each machine and explain its function. It was very fascinating. He has his own personal recipes that they make there in small batches on site and then bottle and store for distribution. We picked out a sampling of his various flavors of Zuberfizz, making sure we grabbed at least one bottle of each flavor to try. He then treated each kid to a bottle of soda to drink with our sack lunches. We ate lunch at a picnic table outside, and the kids proclaimed the root beer to be the best root beer they had ever tasted! After lunch, we went back inside the factory, to see Mr. Zuber and his 2 teammates back at work bottling the flavor of the day: grape soda. Each kid took his/her turn gently pushing the small boxes filled with bottled soda into the machine that then automatically added packing tape to the top of the box to seal it before being stacked for storage. That was cool!

Over the next several weeks, we enjoyed sampling a different flavor every so often, making our selections last! Our favorite flavors were Creamy Root Beer, Vanilla Cream Soda, Original Cola, and ironically Strawberry Rhubarb Soda.

Afterward, we stopped at a public park to do some schoolwork for a bit before heading to the Durango Fish Hatchery, where we fed baby rainbow trout. We got a kick out of watching the teeming water in the tanks splash and stir as the baby fish frantically gulped the tossed feed.