Walking around Manitu Springs we soaked up the sights, discovering odd quirky clocks & art work. Eventually returning to the van to begin the joinery to Monument Valley. Passing by Lake George we made a quick stop to read a historic notice board in a lay-by at Buena Vista.
This told the tale of how Pike & his band of explorers tried with increasing dissatisfaction to climb the various mountains. They wanted to find routes through the terrain. During this time they hunted buffalo & eventually built a stockade. Pike was taken prisoner by the Spanish soon after.
From there the road took us through the Curecanti National Park to Gunnison then Montrose where we stoped to look around the Ute Indian Museum. A First Nation centre which told of the ways & customs of the Ute who lived in the area before the land was taken from them.
The centre is worth a visit if you are in the area & has a small garden which you can spend time walking or sitting in & contains many native species that the Ute would have had use for.
Making our way Across Country
Leaving Montrose the road led us through the Ridgway State Park where the terrain looked harsh & dry with a sparse covering of scrub like plants & trees. There was very little in the way of habitation places like Dove Creek looked abandoned. Bluff was the largest place we came across & decided to stop & take a break.
The museum was partially open & we managed to get a drink & doughnut before taking a look around. The museum told of the harsh life that the early settlers from Europe had trying to cope with the hostile environment. Perhaps has they chosen to work with the first nation people their existence would not have been so difficult.
The first nation people’s lifestyle had been honed over generations to work with the land. Trying to import a lifestyle from a totally different place seldom is successful & it led to a lot conflict. Some of which seems to remain unresolved even today.
Refreshed we continued on reaching the campground near Mexican Hat. Although near Monument Valley it was not possible to travel through as for a start the terrain probably wasn’t good for a rental van & we decided to not take the chance.
Instead we travelled on through the Olijato region to Chinle to get to Meteor Crater. Chinle was an extremely odd place & if it hadn’t been for a desperate bathroom break after miles of wide open territory with nothing in it we wouldn’t have stopped.
Covid restrictions for many places by this time had been lifted & the world was slowly returning to some sort of ‘normal’ but not so in this place. It was clear as soon as we got out of the van the local population weren’t used to tourists & masks were still in force.
Thankfully we had some in the van for just such occasion & after finding a rest room we had hoped to stop for a coffee. However two odd characters started to follow us & it felt a little intimidating so we headed back to the van & left swiftly. Not a place for a revisit for me.
Meteor Crater
Meteor Crater or Barringer Crater is literally an enormous hole in the ground that was made by a gigantic meteor that crashed in to the earth. Until you stand on the edge & look in its difficult to convey the size of this pit in the earths surface.
The force was immense & changed the otherwise flat landscape quite significantly. It is approximately 1.186km in diameter & 170m deep. The meteor roughly 50m in diameter is thought to have struck about 50,000 years ago.
Like some of the other weird geological formations to be found in the USA the journey from a natural occurrence to tourist attraction wasn’t smooth. The land has been owned by the Barringer family & the centre remains under their management & the company funds many projects that help further investigation in to this area of science. Visit complete it was time to find a campsite.
