Summer Vacation Trip - Day 9

I wasn’t able to get Mollie going until 0730 this morning.  Once the car was packed, we used US-191 to drive back to Monticello, UT so we could fill up on gas (0825).  We then got on US-491 and continued into Colorado.  We encountered a good deal of road work on the way (frustrating) and weren’t able to get breakfast until we arrived at a McDonalds in Cortez, CO (0935).  The delays also meant that we didn’t make it to Mesa Verde NP until around 1000.  Unfortunately, this meant that we didn’t have a lot of choices for tours of the Cliff Dwellings when we arrived at the Visitor Center...  At 1045, I was able to buy some tickets for the first available tour of the Cliff Palace but the event didn’t start until 1630.  Meanwhile, Mollie was able to get NPS Passport stamps for Mesa Verde and another site called “Yucca House.”  Because of the wait until the tour began, I convinced Mollie that we should leave the park immediately and head toward Hovenweep NM, another park in the area.  This detour required us to use US-160 and several “back roads” to drive across the prairies and back into Utah.  Mollie helped me a lot by setting up the route in her phone so that we were able to get to the site easily.  During the drive, we had several interesting current events discussions and talked about how close Mollie had come to dehydration during the previous day’s hike.  Along the way, Mollie reveled in all the cattle and horses we passed.  We also saw some white flowers along the roadside that Mollie said she had been seeing since before Joshua Tree NP (she had been referring them to as "trumpet flowers").  When we arrived at the Hovenweep Visitor Center, she asked the Ranger what they were and learned that the flowers were called Sacred Datura, a poisonous narcotic.  Mollie was shocked that something so pretty could be have such a harmful effect.  She got another NPS Passport stamp and then we went on a nice walk on the Little Ruin trail.  We stopped at the Hovenweep Castle, Square Tower and Hovenweep House.  We also saw the Eroded Boulder House across the canyon and Sleeping Ute Mountain, off in the distance.  We talked to some local people who were enjoying the cooler temperatures of the day.  They gave us some ideas of other historical locations nearby that they thought we could find interesting.  After about an hour in the National Monument, we headed back into Colorado.  Mollie was able to locate Yucca House NM in her phone and set up the map in the car's GPS.  We ate lunch (leftovers) in the car on the way.  The GPS location took us into the middle of some farm fields and it took some online sleuthing to figure out that we were allowed to drive on a gravel route that had a sign “private drive."  After all the effort, Mollie was NOT impressed.  Her comment was “This is really nothing - it’s like someone just decided ‘let’s call it a national park!’” I couldn’t really argue because the parking lot was someone's driveway and the park was just a small walking trail around a partially fallen down building that had been covered up by bushes and tall grass.  Because I wasn’t sure about what would happen if I parked the car, I didn’t go with Mollie.  She later said she’d filled out a sign-in sheet that she discovered near the entrance and figured out that there had only been nine visitors (including her) in the past week.  Mollie completed the sign-in and then went on a walk around the site by herself.  After only about ten minutes, the bugs became too much to bear and, worse, she heard a loud rustling in the bushes.  The last straw was when she noticed an ominous sign that warned visitors of a pathogen that had been discovered in the area that was suspected to be passing between rodents, ticks, and fleas.  Mollie told me that the sign was from 2016 and this made her start wondering if the Park Service had figured out how to resolve the problem (she said “I hope they don’t manage zoonotic diseases the way they manage their trails”).  All of this caused Mollie to literally run back to the car and jump inside, breathless.  We had brought some hand sanitizer and she tried to clean her hands.  Prior to our visit, I’d believed I’d been to this NPS location in 2011 but her description changed my mind (so it was new to me too).  Mollie was very disappointed with the visit and asked why such a place would even be in her NPS Passport book (I couldn’t answer).  Despite the “setback”, I was able to convince her to agree to visit one of the interesting locations that the locals had recommended (a place I wanted to see for myself).  We headed over to Canyon of the Ancients, a site managed by the BLM.  The park was pretty big but only a little of it was easily accessible from Cortez.  The Visitor Center was very nice (lots of history and built relatively recently).  Mollie was quite worried that she might have gotten a tick during one of her hikes so she spent a while in the bathroom, making sure she was OK.  I walked through the museum but we didn’t end up staying very long at the park (much to the chagrin of one of the employees, who told us we could spend “hours” there).  Mollie was impatient to get to Walmart to buy snacks and other supplies for our trip and I took her there.  It was nice to stock up on treats and walk around in the nice air conditioning.  We’d been warned to leave the Mesa Verde Visitor Center at least one hour before the tour, so we left Walmart at 1500.  We returned to the park and started the long drive to the far end of Mesa Verde NP for the Cliff Palace tour.  We made no stops at pullouts along the way and arrived at the location where the tour started with about 15 minutes to spare.  Our Ranger Guide, Ann, walked around and introduced herself to each family and asked where they were from, went over some health and safety warnings.  Ann then began to guide us down into the canyon that contained the legendary cliff dwellings.  The trail went from metal stairs, to sandstone stairs, to ladders and finally stopped at an alcove right near the dwellings.  Our guide gave us a bit of history about the buildings and their discovery.  We had to wait on other tour groups, but before long we were able to walk into the dwellings a bit.  The blazing sun made it slightly miserable to stand out of the cover of shade but we were all excited to walk into the dwellings nonetheless.  The Ranger told us the Hopi's story of the creation of the world and explained the significance of some of their living spaces, as well as how Mesa Verde NP came to be.  After that was all done, the official tour came to an end.  We were still in the Cliff Palace but were told we could walk back at our own pace.  Everyone got ready to leave, but then a girl and her father began pushing through the crowd because she didn't feel well.  They got right up next to Mollie when the girl began to throw up profusely.  It appeared that she had symptoms of heat exhaustion - the Ranger had warned us about it at the beginning of the walk but admitted that it was difficult to avoid in the climate.  Mollie later told me that she had felt like throwing up during the Delicate Arch hike the previous day but admitted that these feelings only went away after I made her drink a LOT of water and she found a shady spot to recharge.  Unfortunately, the steep canyon where the Cliff Palace was located had no similar place for the poor girl to hide from the late afternoon heat.  We, along with all the other tour participants, quickly headed to the parking lot after seeing that girl “lose her lunch” (Mollie’s words).  Truthfully, I was also feeling the effects of the sun and was very happy to reach the air conditioning of the car.  We did a little exploring in the area a bit longer, following a road that followed the rim and stopping for photos in a few pull-out locations there.  On the long road back to the park entrance, though, we didn’t stop very much (Mollie’s choice).  Our day of sightseeing came to a close as soon as we left the park and we began the hour and a half drive back to Blanding, UT (via US-491).  We ate dinner (snacks we’d picked up from Walmart) on the way.  We saw a fire burning off in the distance, and after a bit of internet sleuthing, Mollie figured out that there was a big fire in Doe Canyon that had burned about 90 acres in 10 days (it was caused by a lightning strike).  We also figured out that the whole area was famous for its bean crops.  While we were driving, Mollie and I agreed that we’d had such a good experience at the Prospector Motor Lodge that we wanted to return for another night.  She made the phone call and talked to the owner about our plan - he gave us a discount!  Mollie then talked to her mother for a little while.  Just before reaching Monticello, we almost got hit by a mule deer that was running into the road.  Mollie told me that she’d really enjoyed staying in the area for the last few days because “they have such beautiful sunsets."  Of course, I liked hearing this and agreed that views like that were the perfect way to cap off our busy day.  We arrived at the hotel in Blanding at 2055.  After checking into the room, Mollie wrote a Facebook/blog post for all the parks we visited.  We talked a lot about how we’d just had a great “four park day” (even though Mollie admitted that one was a BLM site and there wasn’t a stamp box in her NPS Passport book).  We watched a little TV and went to bed at 2300.