Tuesday 5 June

Up by 8am. Despite the motel seeming quite full we were the only ones at breakfast when we went in. The usual motel fare but sadly they’d run out of bananas. Got talking to the desk clerk and another guest who came in with her elderly father. We worked out that the desk clerk is the son of the man who we saw yesterday so presumably they are the owners. We all talked about the fires and the local effects on tourism. Apparently, Silverton will be very badly hit. Interestingly the elderly gentleman said that in his view the rail trip is too long to be enjoyable. 

Set off around 9.45am and drove straight to Telluride the first part of which was retracing our steps to Ridgway. This is all part of The San Juan Skyway - a very scenic journey over passes, etc. We stopped and took photos on our phones and WhatsApped them to various people.

Telluride was very busy - they have a 5-day Wild West Festival on. Managed to find a parking space. Walked along and looked at various shops and then had coffee. The town appears to be thriving with loads of galleries, restaurants, etc Telluride is a big skiing centre being at the foot of various mountains, all around 14,000ft. They are attempting to extend the season by encouraging walking, mountain biking, etc and the Festival is probably part of this. They have the only free gondola ride in the US. We walked to the bottom station and took the 13-minute ride to Mountain Village. In fact, you can go on beyond this on another 6-minute ride on a completely separate system, but after talking to a local visitor guide we decided not to. We had a quick look round Mountain Village - mainly smart apartments and hotels plus restaurants plus ski and cycle hire before having a light lunch in a cafe. Managed to phone Tracey and Joyce.

Came down again on the gondola. An interesting point - alternate gondola cars have racks at the rear for carrying bikes. Unfortunately, modern bikes don’t have simple crossbars and so won’t fit on the racks. They now have to be hung vertically on the side of some cars which have specially fitted frames. It looked a bit precarious with a bike simply hanging by its front wheel, but it obviously works. Worth pointing out at this point that absolutely everywhere we’ve been we’ve seen serious cyclists on road machines - this includes a man and woman at Black Canyon yesterday. These people must be amazingly fit.

About a two-hour drive from Telluride to Mancos. Again, much of this was the San Juan Scenic Skyway. The earlier part was more spectacular from our point of view. We only stopped a couple of times for photos and at Dolores to fill the car. Although in fact when we got to Mancos we found a petrol station right next to the motel.

The Mesa Verde Motel is small but has new owners who have refurbished it in the last year and it seems very nice. After unpacking, doing photos and diary, we walked to the next-door restaurant and had a good meal. Before returning to the room we took a short stroll round the block. We found an area that consists almost entirely of galleries and craft shops etc. It also houses the Opera House.

Back in the motel we watched a Jonathan Meades programme that we’d downloaded. The wifi is far too slow to live stream anything. We thought we’d found a 30-minute programme on BBC to download but it was simply too slow to bother so we gave up and did the crossword in bed.

Wednesday 6 June

No breakfast here but we’d bought stuff to eat in the room. While doing this we found that the wifi was now much faster and we were able to download some 30 minute programmes. We weren’t sure what the catering would be in Mesa Verde NP so we tried going to the highly recommended bakery in the town. This was frantically busy and it didn’t look as though they had much that might suit us so we gave up and set off.

The Park is very close to Mancos and we were there in no time. We went straight into the Visitor Centre for a quick look and then on to the Park proper. At the pay booth we were told not to hang our Parks Pass in the windscreen as the holder, and probably the badge itself, would melt in the heat.

Our first stop was the Mancos Valley Overlook and then we went into the campground where we thought we’d grab a coffee from the cafe. The window was closed with a sign that it would reopen at 11am. We weren’t going to wait but then we noticed you could get coffee in the adjacent shop so we sat in there for a while.

We then started working our way round as much of the park as we could. We then carried on through the tunnel and onto Montezuma Valley Overlook and then onto Park Point Overlook. After this we had to choose which of the two drives so we chose to go along the Chapin Mesa. We got to the Archaeological Museum in time to have a brief look round before lunch. We had hoped to go to the Spruce Tree House but this is now closed because of a rock fall, but we had some good views from Spruce Tree Terrace.

We then had a quick lunch in the cafe. Les had a ham & cheese roll and Anne had dips with pitta. These were pre-packed and sealed and so having eaten them we bought another one each to put in the coolbox, as we believe that there won’t be much available in Monument Valley tomorrow.

Carried on slowly round the Mesa Top Loop stopping at the various archaeological remains and views, ending up at the Sun Temple which also overlooks the Cliff Palace dwellings on the opposite side of the valley. By this time it was after 3pm and the satnav showed a 2.5 hour journey to the motel so we decided to leave the Park.

On the way back we stopped at the Visitor Centre to drink some of the huge bottle of apple juice we bought yesterday and to use the Restrooms. We had intended to drive non-stop to Bluff but in fact in Cortez (which turns out to be quite a large town) we stopped at a Safeway and bought the usual salad etc for this evening.

Rest of the journey was quite uneventful - lots of long straight roads, although we did notice significant change as soon as we got into Utah. We started to see ‘nodding donkeys’ all along the route and the roads became windier. We were quite worried because we could see no sign of Bluff until we actually entered the town. In fact The Kokopelli Inn is about the only thing that we’ve seen of the town apart from the adjacent store, so it looks as though the Safeway stop was a good idea. Downloaded photos and typed up diary by which time it was nearly 7pm.

Ate in room and had our last beers.