More weekend adventuring

This past weekend was a long one (yay for Fridays off!), hopefully to be the first of many. We think we are going to be able to work four ten-hour days for the whole of July. Since we spend at least 2 hours in the car every day, the travel-work ratio will work out much better. And maybe with an extra day of rest thrown in there, I will actually have the energy to go a-traveling a little bit more. I had grand ambitions, but reality has fallen short due to laziness and apprehension about camping alone. As my roommates no longer have the same days off that I do, however, I've realized I need to get over this.

So this past weekend, I went for a trial adventuring run and saw some of the sites in the immediate area. I toured Cortez, which with a population of 9000 now feels like the BIG CITY. I saw a movie, which was a novel experience, especially because I was surrounded by cyclists on a round-Colorado trip. They seemed to think that I was part of the group and were unusually friendly. I'm ok with that.

Sunday I went to Hovenweep National Monument, which was built and inhabited about the same time as Mesa Verde. If you need that link, tsk tsk. Basically it was the remnants of dwellings built in the 1200s along the edges of a canyon/drainage. The coolest part of the archaeology in this area is that you can really tell why people chose to settle where they did. I wanted to live there, or at least camp there for the night.

That wasn't so true about the ruins we saw in Jordan which were situated in the exact center of desert plateaus. What were those people thinking?

At any rate. I took pictures, but it turns out I am kind of a crap photographer. I will post them anyway, though, because why not?

Hovenweep with the "Sleeping Ute" in the background



More Hovenweep. Not capturing the awesomeness




Foy Lake. Somewhere completely different. the Manti-La Sal is full of these preposterous man-made lakes that are rarely used except for by the occasional fisherman. They are pretty from the right angles, though.