Four States at Once!

When I was in sixth grade, my English teacher Mrs. Mann told us about a trip she had taken to the southwest, and about this neat place where four states touched. Ever since then, I've been slightly obsessed with going to that spot for myself. After doing some research on the site, located on Navajo tribal land, I had to adjust my expectations, because many reviews weren't that nice.

Yes, it seemed tourist trap-y, but it also was providing much-needed support to the local economy. So I paid my three dollars and parked.

Here's what it looks like:

And here's me, standing in all four states at once. (After I got home, a saw a snap on Flickr of a girl who sat criss-cross applesauce in four states at once...so, yup, one day I'm going to have to go back and do that).

I had many other fun Southwest adventures on this day, but the Four Corners needed its own spotlight.

Cliff Dwellers

Mesa Verde National Park was not at all what I expected it to be.  For starters, despite it's name translating as "green table," I really didn't expect it to be so green.

 

I also didn't really expect it to be so interesting in terms of archaeology. I figured it would be cool to look at a few cliff-dwelling ruins. But instead I found an entire mesa-top's worth of excavated dwellings from different times in the ancestral Puebloans' history.

I was too chicken to climb down the ladders into any of these cliff-side ruins, but the park movie that talked about it helped me visualize. There's also a really fascinating museum up on the mesa with tons of artifacts.

The best part, though, was the campground. Mesa Verde has one of the darkest night skies in the country, and I have never seen anything so amazing. I could see millions of stars. I must have laid out watching them for hours. I want to go back just for that!

Time Flies

I cannot believe how long it's been since my last post. I have so much to update. I'm going to finish the recap of my 2011 trip, and then I have several smaller trips to add. I'm also gearing up for an amazing 2013 summer trip  to hit the rest of the northern national parks I haven't visited. Here's hoping that our impending plunge over the fiscal cliff doesn't result in a tax increase that ruins my plans.

I'm also using this post to test out my new tablet, which will be journeying with me this summer encased in an otterbox to prevent the unfortunate screen damage mishap of 2010.