Tour de four corners

In case anyone was wondering, I made it back from my short vacation last week. :)

The trip was awesome - I headed toward southwest Colorado with no real destination in mind. The first day, I visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It was a place I'd been to a looong time ago (I was probably 11 or 12) and had been meaning to visit again for quite a while. The canyon wasn't quite as spectacular as I'd remembered, but it was still really neat and I practically had the whole park to myself.

After the canyon, I kept going toward southwest Colorado and stayed in Ouray. I just recently discovered this corner of Colorado and it has quickly become one of my favorite places in the U.S. I'll definitely be heading back there again this summer.

Next, I headed to the Four Corners monument. This place had always been described to me as a tourist trap and not really worth seeing. Yeah, it was a bit out of the way but it only cost $3.00 to get in so I didn't feel like I was being ripped off at all and pretty much expected what I saw there. It's just one of those places I've always wanted to visit so...mission accomplished.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to head for Monument Valley. I really didn't know what to expect, it was just a place on the map that I'd heard about and decided to check out. I wasn't sure if it was like a national park, just a general area, or what.

When I got into the area, I wasn't sure if what I'd seen from the road was it or if I needed to keep on going. What I could see was pretty cool, but not really anything mind-blowing and I was a little upset that I'd gone out of my way to visit. I guess this is a good place for a little back story...

Before I left for my trip, a friend at work had given me a book that had a picture of this on the cover:

That butte was actually what I was trying to find in Monument Valley. I saw a few formations that looked kind of close, but nothing as iconic as that. In the area I was traveling in, the picture of that butte was everywhere but I couldn't seem to find it. I finally stopped at a gas station and asked where I could find it and they said I needed to go across the highway to the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Somehow, I'd missed that sign on my way in...

It was getting kind of late, so I checked into a hotel in the valley then drove a couple of miles to the Navajo park. This entry is already getting kind of long so I'll just say that Monument Valley (inside the Tribal Park) is one of the coolest places on Earth! If you've ever seen an old Western movie, chances are good that it was shot there.

Back at the hotel, I finally opened the special bottle of wine I mentioned in my last post. The wine is called Merkin Chupacabra and comes from a vineyard owned by the lead singer of the band Tool (hang out at that website for a minute and it'll go from the current news text to a really cool animation/site). I honestly wasn't expecting the wine to be very good but was pleasantly surprised. I'd rank it up there with some of the best wine I've had in recent memory.

Every room at the hotel has a good-sized balcony with a bistro set facing the valley. Watching the sunset over the valley while enjoying the wine really made the last few months worth of stress melt away and everything seemed balanced again in my world.

I headed home the next day through Moab and on to I-70. More beautiful scenery for that whole drive...

I'd love to have some pictures up from the trip but I'm having a hard time finding my memory chip adapter so they'll have to wait. I wanted to get them uploaded before posting this but figured in another week the trip would be so old I wouldn't bother posting on it at all.