Back on the Road... even though we prefer off-road!

Well, after much umm-ing and arr-ing and a considerable amount of procrastination on my part, we finally dragged ourselves kicking and screaming away from Moab. Our route for the next few days will take us in a huge “U” shape, ending in Denver, basically following all the recommendations of places to visit from the guys in Salt Lake.

Having left Moab we picked up the 191 south and headed towards the Navajo Nation Indian Reserve and some of its offerings, firstly Monument Valley. But just south of Moab Charlie Camel decided to let us know that he didn’t want to leave either by getting a flat tyre. Imagine our surprise when we got the wheel off and saw this crack in the rim.. YOIKS!!

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilEj_QRtj0icKBtWNMVhRGVxbLMl3Om6DPKIn8Bit95IJgnIjOIM1KFo7d2VS0cSjPfWAGaE0GP8K84LKiuIEW2JFfJXADL75Rx6ztHH1EKlIjpywWu4hsbyBNJk2kEsDLs11ElRZotW8/s1600-h/bustedrim.jpg">

So that’ll be the end of that rim then. Anybody who has any suggestions about how this could happen we’d love to hear them!

Anyway, back on the road again and heading towards Monument Valley. This is the classic western landscape that everyone has seen the pictures of and includes such geological features at the Mexican Hat. We just drove through Monument Valley without going to the “Tribal Park” itself as according to the ‘Rough Guide’ you can pretty much see most of it from the main road. There are various Navajo-led tours around the valley itself, but we were content to just admire from afar.



Next stop on our whirlwind tour of this region was Canyon De Chelly (pronounced De Shey) National Monument, which had been recommended to us by a whole gaggle of people. The Canyon itself is a sacred place for the Navajo people and you are only allowed in with a guide. There are various view points along the rim that look down the 1000ft canyon, but as it was getting late we decided to camp the night at the FREE campground. That evening I had a go at repairing our wheel and the hole in the inner tube using the patented Wallace Gaffer-tape hole patching method ;-)



But not to fear, we put in a new tube in it and we’re now using it to mount the bikes on – we won’t run it on the interstates, the spare that was on the back is now on the bonnet, so fingers crossed we won’t get two flats at the same time.

The campsite and the Cayon itself were absolutely stunning, sadly, the rest of the reservation, well, wasn’t. It was kind of like Pilands on a bad day, Jen didn’t cope to well with the vast amount of dogs running around clearly homeless and the dead/uncared for animals that littered the sides of the road. Combined with the warnings about leaving your car unattended it didn’t make for relaxing visiting, so we planned to make a retreat after visiting the monuments and natural wonders we were planning on seeing.

The following day we were up bright and early and drove through 4 states in about 8 seconds – no, sadly the warpdrive still isn’t working – we were at Four Corners Monument. This is where you can stand in 4 states simultaneously, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.



After all that excitement we were off again, this time in the direction of Mesa Verde National Park. On the way there we went through Cortez and saw the stereotypical classic American Diner. Well, as it was lunch time it seemed only right that we should pop in for a small snack (massive burger with huge portion of fries and as many free top ups of coke as you can manage!). These classic diners with their polished mirrored outsides and nasty glass tiled insides are getting rarer and rarer. We’ve seen a few on our travels, but it’s never been the right time of the day to stop. Unfortunately, this wasn’t “Peggy Sues” or “Rosies”, but a Denny’s. Never mind, it did the job and all the waitresses had really big 60’s hair doo’s!



We hauled our enormously over fed and gassed up bodies back to the car and took off again for Mesa Verde. This park has some of the best preserved cliff dwellings, built sometime between Christ and 1300AD by the ancestral Puebloan people. They got bored and moved out at some point, probably because they over farmed the land and bled it dry, but personally I reckon they moved out because they’d only get a short amount of sunshine during the day! (just encase you were wondering – it was actually drought – Jen)



Next stop was Telluride. We were actually passing through looking for a mountain road to Ouray that had been recommended to us as a stunning drive. Unfortunately it turned out that the road didn’t actually get as far as Telluride so we had to get back on the main roads. We eventually reached Ouray, a delightful little town and it was in the full swing of Halloween! We’ve all seen the films and stuff, but I never really thought that local people made that much of an effort, but people here really get into these things, houses get decorated with cobwebs, coffins, witches and of course the obligatory pumpkins, people get dressed up and there is a real happy, fun, party atmosphere… not like in the UK where you get a group of knife wielding spotty oik of a teenager wearing a hoody banging on your door and threatening to kill you cat if you don’t give ‘em a tenner!
We arrived slightly too late to visit the hot springs, so went out for a bite to eat instead. The following morning though, we made our way to the hot springs and spent an hour relaxing in the 102-106 degree f water while looking at the snow capped mountains. If only we could have some mountains overlooking Richard and Tracy’s back garden!

We then went in search of this road we’d been trying to find yesterday. I think we failed, (sorry Rob!) but we did find Engineers Pass, a mountain trail that led high up into the Uncompahgre National Forest and gave us some stunning views of the 14309ft mountain peak.

We left the trail after taking a million and 1 pictures and headed north again, this time towards Fruita. We’d heard from a couple of people that Fruita offered some good mountain biking. We arrived just as the visitors centre had closed, but had a little drive around town and found Over the Edge http://otesports.com/ . We popped in and asked about the biking and the chap serving us was fab. He knew straight away in which direction to point us. We also bought a book listing all the trails that have been created in the BLM land. The main difference between the biking here and at Moab is that here it is all single track stuff, created specifically for mountain biking… cool! :-) Moab provides a completely different experience with slickrock and sand, and the trails are quite often shared with motor bikes, ATVs, horses and of course “Jeeps”. The bizarre thing is that Fruita is probably on a par with Moab for what it has to offer the mountain biking enthusiast, but unless you are a local the chances of you hearing about are pretty remote, which is sad.
Anyway, we managed to get a couple of good trail done, Kessels Run, Prime Cut and Joe’s Ridge. The last one was brilliant, some really nice fast downhills. Jen freaked out being just ever so slightly scared of heights, but gotta give her credit, she only walked one small **EXTREME** downhill bit with a several hundred foot drop down either side. Me, well I just shut my eyes, peddled like billy-o, shouted a lot, and prayed!
The riding here is quite similar to what we have at home, so as we were slightly pushed for time, we made our escape, but have added it to our list of “Future Visits”.



Back on the road again, this time heading for Denver. I had joined the Solihull Society forum (a Colorado based Land Rover club) to ask all sorts of boring questions whilst we’d been planning the trip. And now we had the opportunity to meet a few of the core members. We arranged to meet at the Landsdowne Arms, an English style pub. How happy was I when I saw that they had Tetley, Bass and London Pride on tap! I could have stayed there all night. This is the first time in several months that I have had a pint of proper bitter. Mind you, it was still too cold!!
We had a good night talking to Tom, Jim (Jimfoo from LR4x4) and Todd, and it was great to meet them and their vehicles. It sounds like Colorado has just as much to offer as Moab, maybe more! So that’s another place added to the list of Future Visits then!

At the end of the evening we exchanged club stickers, and Todd kindly donated a Solihull Society Moab Rally t shirt to the “Keep Dan Warm in these freezing cold Nights” fund. Tom then led us to the nearest hotel, which happened to be a Marriott. But with my charm, sophistication and fluttering eye lids, I managed to blag a hotel suite that was bigger than our house for 50 quid! Bargain!



The south is calling, so we’ll be “bigging up” for Nascar from now on in the hope that we can get to Florida without getting shot!