Albuquerque & Mesa Verde

        We met with several of Mary’s friends who live in Albuquerque. Had a couple of great dinners, much needed and much appreciated chiropractic adjustments and Mary got a very stylish and short hair cut. We visited old town Albuquerque which dates back to the 1600’s, and hiked around Petroglyph National Monument just outside the city limits. Also drove up to Sandia Crest – the 10,000+ foot mountain top just east of town. Albuquerque has a very nice eclectic mix of cultures, geography, climates, architecture and vegetation.

We then drove to southwestern Colorado to see Mesa Verde and Durango. On the way, we passed by Shiprock a very, very large monolith in the Northwestern corner of New Mexico. We stayed just outside the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park at about 7,000 feet elevation. We were about 40 minutes from Durango and 10 minutes from Cortez. Durango is a great town - big enough to have all the amenities and small and original enough to have interesting architecture and great access to the mountains. The area between Durango and Mesa Verde was also gorgeous with snow capped peaks framing alpine meadows and high pastures.

Mesa Verde is just mind boggling. We’ve all seen the photos of the famous Cliff Palace, but there are over 400 archeological sites in the park spread over several canyons. From some of the canyon overlooks you can see several small and medium sized cliff dwellings, some of which are hard to imagine a way in or out.

The views in this part of the country are amazing. Whether you’re on a mountaintop lookout or just driving down the road, you can see forever. It is possible to see rock formations 40 - 50 miles away and mountain ranges 80 - 100 miles away. That is unless you’re in a sand storm and then it’s like a thick dry fog that leaves residue almost everywhere.

Which brings us to the weather. We have had some great days, but just like everywhere, the weather is still trying to decide if it is early spring or late winter. We get a few warm sunny days, and then it gets cloudy, windy and cold. We haven’t gotten a lot of rain in the specific places we have been, just some light showers every now and then. Sometimes, we can see rain falling from the clouds, but it is so dry that the rain doesn’t actually hit the ground.

We are experiencing a wide variety of landscapes, cityscapes, weather patterns, and cultures - just what we had hoped for. Not a lot of lazing around in the sun by the pool yet, but summer is just around the corner.