the very long day

As promised, we started out the day by watching the sun rise somewhere beautiful. Uncle Ken gave us directions to a small overlook that was the perfect place to watch the first rays of the sun hit the Garden of the Gods, with Pikes Peak in the background. Stunning.

After that, we bid farewell to Colorado Springs and hit the road. Our first stop, a couple hours later, was Great Sand Dunes National Park. We explored for a little bit, mostly around the visitor center, where we found a nice herd of mule deer grazing.

On the way out, I spotted the prize: a pronghorn antelope! Even better, it just stood there waiting for me as I changed lenses so I could get a closer view. (Don't worry, I'm not one of those people who will risk being gored or whatever to take a selfie with a wild animal. There was a good amount of distance involved -- hence the need to change lenses -- and a fence between us.)

On that high note, we set off for our next stop, Mesa Verde National Park. We got there just before the visitor center was set to close at 4:30 (side note: these places are all hours away from each other; the West is seriously spread out) and decided to do the Mesa Loop driving tour. So we drove up a mountain, then there were stops along the top where we could do some exploring and see cliff dwellings and ancient ruins.

There were also vast areas that had been impacted by wildfires, and each one had a sign offering the name of the fire and the year it happened. This picture is about 15 years post-wildfire. Can you imagine?

We only had one animal sighting in Mesa Verde, a pair of wild horses. We all got really excited because they were brown blobs in the distance, and we thought maybe they were bears, but no such luck.

After Mesa Verde, we headed to Four Corners ... only to find that it closed for the day at 4:50. This was amazing to me, as I didn't realize that national monuments kept office hours. But apparently it's run by a tribe instead of the federal government, so they get to pick the hours. So we ended up seeing it from a distance as we wove in and out of the four states. Unfortunately, this was our one chance to visit without going totally out of our way, so we had to cross it off our list. (Mike, shaking his fist: "Four Corners, you have made an enemy today!")

By this time the sun was going down (which happens kind of late in the West), but we drove on, reaching Mexican Hat late at night. We had a total of something like 11 hours of driving today. Thank goodness we're staying here for three nights.