Last October my husband and I decided it was time to trade in some of our hard-earned Mileage Plus miles and take a weekend getaway trip to the geographic center of all things road-trip in the West- The Four Corners. 4 states, over 1200 miles, and 2GB of photos later, this is our story:

DAY 1

The journey began at 6:05am in Sacramento, CA (SMF) where we caught the first flight of the day to Denver. After a short layover and an hour ride over the Rocky Mountains in a DASH-8, we landed in Durango, CO (DRO) just before noon. We grabbed our bags, picked up our jalopy-of-a-rental car, inhaled a couple burgers at the local Sonic Drive-In and hit the road.

We started the afternoon in Mesa Verde National Park by taking a leisurely-paced self-guided tour of the Spruce Tree House. The next few hours were spent franticly circling the Cliff Palace and Mesa Top loop roads (several times) while braving car troubles, in hopes of seeing the rest of the park’s sites…in the daylight.

After a mandatory stop at the Far View Visitor Center to stamp our National Park Passports and purchase tickets ($3), we proceeded to the Cliff Palace to take the ranger-guided tour there. We descended the staircase along the side of a huge rock and stood at the bottom in awe of the ancient dwellings, that in my opinion, make Mesa Verde a must-visit if you are in the region. The ascent back to the parking lot was up a series of wood ladders, modeled after the ones the people had used over a thousand years ago.


Square Tower House Ruin, Mesa Verde

Sunset time was spent snapping pictures of the Square Tower House ruin as it transformed from white to yellow to orange to a fiery red with the fading light. We then made the one-and-a-half hour drive back to Durango, exchanged our heap-of-junk-rental car (after a lengthy phone dispute with Hertz), and called it a night.