North Rim and Little Hollywood

Today we decided to dedicate the whole day for the North Rim of Grand
Canyon. We spent the day looking the views and hiking. The North Rim
is behind a quite long drive, but the drive there is very scenic in
itself. North Rim it is not as touristy (more of a national park and
less of an amusement park) as the South Rim, but we thought it was
definitely worth the drive, scenery was amazing - better than on South
Rim, we thought - and it was much cooler than the South Rim, so nicer
for walking! During one of our hikes down we were met almost
face-to-face with two deer. So if planning a visit to Grand Canyon,
you definetely shouldn't miss North Rim.

We thought we would be done quite early, but it was almost eight when
we got to our city for tonight, Kanab. We had just chosen it from the
map without any knowledge of it being the "Little Hollywood", town
where dozens of movies we filmed, including many Western movies plus
the Planet of the Apes (both versions). Lassie etc... Again just by
luck we came to the Parry Lodge, a beautiful Inn where the movie crews
have stayed. A place you should all see! It had a movie showing in its
old barn (where all movie star horses have slept, they show movies
there all summer nights), "Thunderhead - son of Flickan". Story tells
about a horse, and was filmed here of course! I remembered the movie
from our favourite TV series Gilmore Girls, they've watched it at
least once or twice...

We had a small introduction of the place, the movie, had some popcorn
and soda; a wonderful experience.

Our distance today: 279 mi

Canyons and craters, grand and less so

We started towards our goal of the day, Grand Canyon, on I-40 towards
Flagstaff. Our first stop was Meteor Crater, as name implies, it's a
meteor crater 1 mile across and 300 ft deep. It was interesting enough
by itself but was almost dwarfed by the tourist attraction / museum
complex built alongside it (the attraction, as well as the whole
crater, is in private ownership).

Next stop and a slight detour away from the route was Sedona and Red
Rocks in Oak Canyon. Beautiful rock formations not unlike those around
Moab. Road there was greener than the ones in Utah and beautiful!

We reached our day's main attraction, Grand Canyon, at about 4 pm, an
appropriate time for sight-seeing and photograph-taking. But before we
could enter It, we went through Tusayan, a strange non-town just
outside the national park and home for few hotels and an IMAX theatre
(I wonder to whom it's for; the people who'd rather look at Grand
Canyon on screen less than 5 miles from the real thing).

Grand Canyon is fantastically large, but we missed a bit of the wow-factor perhaps because we had seen stuff like Canyonlands and Black Canyon already on the trip. But it grew on you as you looked at it for longer time, you have to let yourself sit down and let the grandness sink in.Since we decided not to sleep at Tusayan (which was very expensive) we aimed for Cameron, a little town on the map 50 miles from Grand
Canyon. As we approached Cameron and saw absolutely nothing we became
a bit apprehended - where were we going?

Cameron proved to be a collection of little houses on desert at the
crossroads of two small highways. We almost gave up hope of finding
lodging here (it was 7.30pm and we had been travelling since 8.30an),
when we noticed a "trading post", actually a big motel with a
restaurant and a bigger souvenier shop. The motel was very nice with
clean and new rooms. It wasn't cheap (but cheaper than Tusayan's
hotels anyway), but the strangest thing was that they didn't serve or
sell any kind of beer or other alcoholic beverages. Why? We don't know
(and did not dare to ask). We slept well there, beautifully decorated
rooms with Navajo style (pastel colours and geometric patterns somehow
appeal to the Scandinavian taste).

Miles today: 330 mi
Situation of 'heppa' (horsey) game: 20-20

Get your kicks from Route 66

Today our way followed the historical Route 66. First stop was Grants,
an old uranium mining town along route 66, with its mining museum, old
cafes and motels.

Near it we also hiked to an volcano and an ice cave! Some extremes for
the trip. Another theme for the day was the Indian reservation areas,
we drove through many and finished driving to Holbrook (surrounded by
the Navajo nation), where we also saw traditional Navajo dances and
music (not a show exactly, more like people gathered to have easy time
in the park).

Before we came to Holbrook we visited the Petrified Wood and Painted
Desert National Park, the scenery there was at times like from another
planet again.

Holbrook also has one of the great wonders of modern world: a wigwam
village motel! Yes, a motel consisting of concrete wigwams for rooms.
Unfortunately, it was booked full when we arrived to Holbrook :(.
We got into another vintage motel, Desert Motel, which is otherwise
great but we can hear the railroad loudly behind the building...

New Mexico

On Tuesday we spent the day mostly driving. We saw Pat Parelli's (all
horse people know who he is) place in Pagoda Falls and visited his
office, but they did not have any sales items or happening there.

Entering New Mexico, we saw the landscape change once again: mountains
and pinewoods gave way to plains with mostly sagebrush and some
scattered mesas. The place definetely looks as an area where you can
find UFOs, or at least people who think they have found them. That,
and a lot of folk / outsider art.

A nice surprise sight on the way was Rio Grande gorge; we thought we
were content with canyons but they still seem to affect us. This bodes
well for Grand Canyon.

We stopped for late lunch and relaxed stroll in Taos (where we saw a
seat used by Clint Eastwood (and/or the orangutang) in the movie "Any
which way but loose") but decided to drive to Santa Fe for the night
to get bit towards the west. Funny how we noticed thinking about home
more immediately when we 'turned back' towards to the west.

In Santa Fe there was music performance (modern pop version of Native
American music) on the main square, we enjoyed it a lot.

We decided not to eat at a restaurant (all in the center were quite
expensive) but went to Whole Foods for fresh salsa and guacamole, some
olives, nachos and red wine. Which was nice

Miles: 298 mi

Cliff dwellings and more cliff dwellings

We went in the morning to Mesa Verde National Park, it is dedicated to
Ancestral Pueblo Indians houses built inside the mountain mesas. We
went to few guided tours around the places, and I definitely overcame
my fear of heights by climbing some steeeeep and looong ladders...

The tourguide on the second tour started for some reason complaining
that many of the Mesa Verde artifacts were stolen by Nordenskjöld and
now locate somewhere middle of nowhere, in Helsinki Finland! We told
her we are from there and she was quite amazed... We have to find out
where they are in Helsinki!

We spent the whole day in there, and it was clear there would be
plenty to see for another, but we decided to drive to Durango for the
evening.

Durango is an interesting mix of toursim resort and real town. We
followed Allison's recommendation and went to Seasons' for dinner. We
had a 3-course meal with red wine which was just great! We went to
sleep very satisfied.

We decided to skip Silverton tomorrow as the train trip there and back
would take all day.

-Leyla

Miles: 104

Epilogue: We visited the Helsinki Museum of Cultures, there the Mesa Verde artifacts were on display in Tennispalatsi, Helsinki. Funny.

On the road again and surprising locations

On sunday morning we headed back on to the road again, with lot of
places to visit left on our itinerary, but not before replenishing
supplies at the world's third largest Safeway store, located in
Conifer. It was big.

Our target for the day was either Telluride or Durango, a good 400
miles down the road. We started in good weather to head towards
mountain range after another. A couple of miles before Salida we found
the first interesting location: Mt. Antero, 14000 ft high peak. But
better still was on the way...

During one notably-long straight part of the road we came to pass
Colorado's best-known little town: South Park, ample parking day or
night. The town really looked like its cartoon counterpart, down to
its mountain skyline on the background.

Another nice excursion on the road was Black Canyon, a really deep and
astonishing canyon digged to ground by a river. Although you start to
think how many canyons you can see before getting bored with them.

We had a stop at Telluride, a resort town in between mountains with
great scenery and undeveloped lots costing $3.5 million. We decided to
move on.

We finally made our final stop at Cortez, close to Mesa Verde national
park. It was quite common-looking town with not many notable features
of its own. but after 10 hours of driving it felt very nice to have a
place to rest.

Miles: 406 mi

Horses and campfire

yesterday we started the day relaxed in Allison's and Gary's place,
just discussing so intensily that we almost did not make it in time
for the first scheduled thing that day, Swede Gulch stables. We met
Karen, the owner of the place last time I was here. She has a
beautiful boarding stable where she also breeds quarter horses ams
Swedish dressage horses. Me and Petteri ended up riding the Swedish
horses, it was hard work on such altitudes (7500 feet about 2,5km
above sea level).
After that we continued even higher up the mountains, to Jill's and
Scott's place in Conifer. They have 30 acres, we took a little hike
before dinner with their 3 dogs around there.

Nancy and Jim (my hosts from last year) also came for dinner, we had
great food (again) and then sat by a fire outside grilling mashmellows
for s'mores (graham cookies, melted chocolate and marshmellows).
tastes amazing!

-Leyla

Miles: 51