Our second surprise state! We didn’t realize we were going to hike into NC in the Great Smoky Mountains, and we didn’t think we were going to see Arizona this trip! Four Corners National Monument is located in the Navajo Nation, which has been closed due to covid since early 2020. As we planned for this trip, it was still closed and sure enough, Solso luck strikes again, and it opened the the day we left home! It’s operating at 50% capacity so the website said to expect long lines. We went early and found it was nearly empty! We had fun exploring this simple monument in the middle of nowhere.

After our excursion to stand in 7 places at once (4 states and 3 nations), we went home for lunch and to walk Murphy, then spent the afternoon exploring our 9th national park, 7th of the trip, Mesa Verde. We couldn’t get a ranger led tour today because I didn’t realize the tickets would sell out in minutes! 14 days ago I had a reminder on my calendar to get today’s tickets, and they were long gone by the time I looked. So plan B: try again, set my timer this time (not just a calendar reminder), and get tickets for the next day. Within the first 2 minutes the entire morning sold out but I was able to get an afternoon tour. That means today we explore, tomorrow we take a tour. So if you are planning a trip to Mesa Verde set your alarm and be ready to put tickets in your cart the moment they go on sale (8am Mountain, 10am EST).

I was worried we wouldn’t have the full experience without the ranger led tour into a cliff dwelling (Mat had memories of this being amazing as a kid) but turns out there is plenty to do and see – despite the visitor center being closed due to rising covid cases, the Cliff Loop Road closed for road work, the museum and other buildings closed for HVAC and ADA compliance issues. We picked up our Jr. Ranger books, drove the 20 miles across the park along some pretty awesome cliffs, to the Mesa Verde Loop. We listened to the downloaded audio tour podcast, and got out to explore the 10 lookouts/points of interest. We learned about the first pit houses built to the cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans. The views of the cliff houses were awe-inspiring and worth the trip for just that! I thought we’d see the big famous Cliff House but I didn’t realize we’d see 30 other cliff dwellings scattered throughout the mesa! Without the tour of an actual cliff house, we still managed to spend the majority of the afternoon in the park.

You can guess what’s next… swimming! We love playing frisbee with our awesome crocheted frisbee (aka the hippie frisbee) when we have the pool to ourselves. Then we cleaned up and went out to dinner at Mancos Brewery. Food was great but Mother Nature was spectacular! Storms brewing off in the distance gave us not 1, not 2, but 4 rainbows! After the clouds shifted we saw it was actually 2 FULL rainbows. All the while we watched lightning light up the sky in the distance. The threat of rain and the increasing wind finally chased most of the customers inside, but we were done eating so we headed home. An unforgettable dinner.

We ended our day with the conclusion of The Hunger Games movie and pistachio nuts (from PistachioLand!) for dessert. A day with little expectations (we didn’t think we’d see 4 Corners and didn’t think we’d see much of Mesa Verde) and some mid-day moodiness (finally, it was almost getting weird, LOL) ended up being a full and memorable day.

Friday, July 30th, 2021