Finish: Durango, Colorado
Distance: 278 miles Total to date: 4388 miles
Campground: KOA Durango, Colorado $41.00 for a pull-out area. Very nice spot.
Gas: Kayenta, Arizona 2.80 gal @ $2.84 $8.00; Cortez, Colorado 3.074 gal @ $2.829 $8.70
Park Fees: No fees today...Hoorah!
We stayed at the Cameron Trading Post last night. I was a bit skeptical as we pulled into this place a motel on an Indian Reservation at night-time. That quickly changed when we actually saw the place. It was a very elaborate, well designed and interesting place. The rooms have a distinct Navajo atmosphere, with native design and handy work.
The trading post store is very huge with very good quality merchandise, much of it being Navajo design. In the restaurant, I had a Navajo taco which was amazing. The artwork and old photos were beautiful. There was a photo of a Navajo man from the 1890's, that was the great-great grandfather of one of the servers. I found the Navajo people to be very gentle, kind and soft-spoken. The gardens outside the rooms were very pleasing.
Before we left the Cameron Trading Post, we did a bit of looking around and shopping at the trading post that had more stuff than all of Niagara Falls put together. Most of the merchandise was good to amazing in quality and a lot of the goods were made by the Navajo Indians. There was a lot of pottery, jewelry, Indian apparel, etc.
We filled up with ice water as we would be going a few hundred miles thru the desert. We left Cameron on Hwy 89 North and then took Hwy 160 East. This is prime desert plains area with hills on each side. As we rode, the hills would turn to a bright reddish orange colour. It looked so beautiful against the bright cyan coloured sky. The temperature was a perfect 88 degrees as we rode. It didn't feel sweltering until we would stop.
Just before Tuba City, on Hwy 160E, we saw a sign for dinosaur footprints. We pulled into the field and a group of Navajo Indians had set up wooden booths to sell handmade jewelry. They also would show you the dinosaur footprints and fossils that were strewn on the desert floor. At one time, the area was a shoreline and the dinosaurs used the area as a watering hole. We saw tracks for raptors, Tyrannosaurus and others as well as dinosaur dung and dinosaur eggs. It was really interesting seeing these in an open desert, where they fell and died, instead of a museum.
Our guide hit the area around the eggs and you could tell by the noise that it was hollow underneath. It was a nest, but the Navajo Council will not let anyone disturb the final resting place of these eggs.
My first thought when I saw large rounded objects, was that they were large turtles, the size of a tortoise. My guess was wrong as it was dino dung!
From there, we rode and rode thru the desert. It was so nice. I recall looking at golden brown hills, covered with brown sage and with the reddish, orange hills in the background, against a bright cyan coloured sky with not a cloud in it, cruising around a long smooth curve, with the winds at the perfect temperature, with Carlos Santana playing a guitar solo thru my headsets and thinking to myself...This is exactly why I'm doing this...it's beautiful, it's freedom, it's relaxing, it's medication without a prescription. Wow!
As we went north east on Hwy 160, we came to a location where four state lines meet. We were at the state lines of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all at one time. Kind of a neat moment.
/> We continued thru the desert until we got to Ute country. Here the hills got larger and there was more foilage. We stopped in a small Mexican restaurant in Cortez to have dinner. It was just a small diner that someone was trying to make a go of, so while it wasn't the best, the food was interesting and it felt good to help them out.
We then took Hwy 160N towards Durango. We are back in mountain country. We climbed over a huge set of mountains and went down some large declines. This is ski country! While looking for a KOA, we went into the town of Durango. It's a very bustling town with a lot of restaurants, shops and tourists walking around. Too bad we didn't have time to stop and check it out. Maybe tomorrow.
We stopped at a KOA to camp for the night. Tomorrow, we head north on Hwy 550, also known as the Millionaires Highway because of the number of people who struck it rich during the gold rush days. It's supposed to be a bit un-nerving as there are many spots along the road that have sheer cliff edges and no guardrails. If you get a blog tomorrow, I made it!
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