Taos was a very long drive, made longer by the snowy mountains we drove through, but the sky was clear and sunny (albeit cold) the next day. We stayed at American Artists Gallery House for two nights, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Our room was charming, breakfast was delicious, and the resident peacock flirted with us throughout our game of Scrabble on the patio. Continue reading →

The next morning, it took us a long time to drive up to Arches National Park, due to sleet and road construction, but then it cleared up for a couple of hours. We hiked to one arch, but on our way to another, it started raining and got very cold, so we headed back.

Our next stop was Kelly Place, a bed + breakfast and retreat center near Cortez, Colorado, where we enjoyed chatting with a hiking club from California. The next morning the weather wasn’t very nice, so we drove many miles out of our way to Four Corners to experience being in four different states at once, then drove back to Mesa Verde and got a great look at Cliff Palace.

In looking over our itinerary, we realized that we had just enough unallocated time to zip over to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon before heading east, so that’s what we did. We didn’t have time to hike down into it, but we did stop at several viewpoints, including a lookout tower. Then we drove through the Hopi Indian reservation, which was one of the things I had really wanted to see. Continue reading →