exp skate: Day 29 - Goodbye Moab, hello Cliff Palace!

After Heather and Jared got home all was well. I got to take a shower for the first time in many days and looked at myself in the mirror and noticed that I was orange. You see, the dirt here is Orange or Red and I was a nice Red-Orange!! You know you had a good time when you can't recognize yourself in the mirror!!

They have two Boxers. Once again, something I have always was interested in. I love Boxers, but my schedule just does not work for a dog. I have to make a serious note here. I am a bad dad. Cat dad that is. Big ups go out to Dacia for taking Pauly Walnuts (my cat) in for the length of this trip. Well, and a lot longer than that too. I am a complete cat dad bastard. He is in good hands and loves his buddy Elwa the coolest other cat in the world! Thanks Dacia!!

So moving on, one of the boxers likes to eat poop and then pukes it up. I know, not that is really gross! I hope I did not spoil your dinner. Asside from that, they are great dogs! So gentile but tuff. They love to play and run.

On the way out the next morning, we stopped at the rock house just outside of Moab. This guy build a house within the rock. He spent his life carving out the live rock and in the end, had a really nice place to live! It stays cool all summer and warm all winter. Actually, I think the dwelling maintains something like a 68 degree temperature all year round!!

There were all kinds of kooky attractions to look at aside from the cave house. There was "big foot", frontier jail cells, out houses, odd sculptures and a petting zoo! I think they had emus, wallabees, goats and pot belly pigs. I like the wallabees the best. They seem to be such gentle creatures. But in reality, they'll probably bite your head off!!

Our main destination for today was the mystical Mesa Verde. This place is an International treasure. Mesa Verde is an area that houses several ruins from the Anazasi culture. The ruins are best described as cliff dwellings. Where the Anasazi built cities on extreme locations where enemies were less likely to attack. It was an amazing experience. We were able to check out several sites and look in on many smaller village ruins. We checked out the museums and were able to see the world famous Cliff Palace site from an overlook.

It was super hot despite the elevation. Calabro was getting dehydrated. He kept telling me about altitude sickness and how you should drink a lot of water. You start to feel dizzy and loose your spark. It is supposed to sneak up on you pretty quickly.

August is high tourist season and we could not get in on a guided tour but from the looks of it, we did pretty good. Oddly enough, Eastern Europeans tend to take their vacation in this area during August. So we were among the droves of Euro tourists. I took a few pics but as you can see, they suck. My camera is really damaged and as I said before, only zooms all the way in. UGH

I am so happy that I had the opportunity to see this site. It has been a favorite of mine for a long time and to witness the ruins first hand is a genuine EXP. I would like to come back one day and spend a full day or two exploring the ruins. There are many places I need to go back to now. I am really glad the stomp helped me build my travel agenda for the next 10 years!!

We spent a few hours in Mesa Verde and took the scenic route to Carbondale. We/I ended up driving until nearly midnight again. But it was way worth it! One of the routes, north of Silver-something was almost as good as Glacier National park, and I didn't have to pay addmission for it!! We saw silver mines, 1000 foot drop offs, elevation of 6000 feet? and the Fit continued to slowly make the steep grades. It was a long but amazing drive.

We got turned around a few times but made it to Carbondale after 11pm. I stopped at a pretty nasty 7Eleven with really scary clerks. I ate 2 taquitos - nasty but at that time of night it was goooooooood! I have been trying to eat healthy but sometimes, you just can't on the road.