A Lesson in Time

Play this song while reading today's post: Kate Wolf "The Great Divide."

Well, we made our first tactical error yesterday due to a combination of overambitious driving goals and the fact that I forgot about the time change when I created our itinerary. So, we pulled into Dodge City, Kansas about 1:30 a.m. this morning.  We just awoke (it's 9:30 a.m. Kansas time) and I think we might have missed the continental breakfast.  The girls were real troopers, though, and listened to the rest of Cheaper By the Dozen on audio (lauging out loud most of the book and kindly ignoring their sobbing mother on the last chapter when Dad dies) and then moved on to Little House in the Big Woods which is a repeat for Jane and Grace's first encounter. Both girls were enthralled by the stories and the passing landscape and made driving a real pleasure, even if we're all a little tired today.

But, back to our morning. We had the best breakfast so far with eggs, sausage, fresh fruit and a make your own waffle bar and then headed out to Mesa Verde.

This photo is for you, Dad.  We thought it was hilarious
that the fountain in the area for pets to do their business
looked like a giant pile of, as Grace says, "POO!" She is
still on patrol.

A bored little girl in the camper ahead kept holding up a
sign that said, "Honk if you're awesome!"

Their was a wildfire in 2000 and the landscape is so barren
on the way into Mesa Verde.

The girls have the Sabuda pop-up book America the Beautiful.
 We are seeing quite a few of the sites that they've been looking
at for several years.  Today - Mesa Verde!

You started a trend, Auntie!

First glimpse of the Indian dwelling!

Jane wants to get going - stop taking pictures and let's go
explore!

Getting closer!  (It's about a 1/2 mile hike down.)

Rosalie was tired and not thrilled  about being in the baby carrier.

Jane says she'll take the 1st floor and Grace can have the 2nd!

A pit house used for ceremonies.

Going down! Grace was going to do this, too, but as
soon as she got her foot on the ladder, she realized that
only crazy people would go down into a deep black hole
and burst into tears.  So, it was just Jane and me.

It was very dark, the only light from the little hole
we climbed through.

Fire pit.

Jane wanted me to take a picture of her in her sun hat
protecting her skin for Ms. Rivera, since they are working
on that at school.

One tired baby.

The view heading back down from the cliff dwellings.

So many interesting barns.

We stopped briefly in Durango so the girls could
get an icecream (they earned it after all that hiking) and
Arthur could run down and snap a picture of the trains.

The girls were excited to see the train from their picture
book, All Aboard!

I told him to take a self-portrait since he
had his train shirt on.

There was no parking for the trains and so even though
Grace was excited, she was too tired to walk and opted out.
We parked at McDonald's and Arthur made a solo trek.

Okay so now onto the reason your listening to a Kate Wolf song--I crossed the Great Divide!  Me!  I told Arthur I would handle the driving this portion and so I drove up to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and crossed the Great Divide (not the metaphorical one she's talking about).  It was gorgeous.  We were being chased by a storm and so got a few raindrops and saw some lightning, but we made it safely and were just awed by the beauty of what we were seeing.

We were stopped for about 15 minutes toward the bottom of the mountain as they completed roadwork.  While normally, this would have been a major annoyance, we got to sit behind a party of bikers (all Harley Davidsons with one Honda Goldwing--I think he was a little embarrassed).  They got off their bikes and had a smoke and all of sudden got real excited looking up on the mountainside--they had spotted a deer!  We tried to show the girls, but it was awfully hard to spot.  Pretty soon, we could get going again and they all revved their bikes with a deafening roar that you could feel reverberating through our chests. (Honestly, the only thing that could make the Schulert Family Road Trip cooler would be to be doing it on Harleys.)










We stopped in Alamosa to hit a grocery store from some healthier driving snacks.  We needed some dried fruit and pistachios and non-carbonated beverages.  Grace found what she wanted to spend her $10 on - a taxi!  She is quite pleased, naming it "Taxi of the North" (which I think is an homage to Glinda the Good Witch of the North from the Wizard of Oz, but I'm not really sure).

Rosalie's pretzel ring.

Trains in Alamosa, the former terminus of the Rio Grande
Narrow Gauge railroad (thank you Arthur for that factoid).

The rest of the trip was made in darkness with the kids fast asleep. It was a little creepy.  We passed a sign that said Graveyard Creek. Strange.  Then another sign that said East Graveyard Creek. I'm thinking, who names their local landmarks things like that?  And then I see a historical marker for Sand Creek Massacre. Apparently, at dawn on November 29th, 1864, 675 volunteer militia men murdered around 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho elderly men, women and children.  2014 marks the 150th anniversary of this atrocity. No wonder my spine was tingling as we passed that in the dead of night.

We also passed a wind turbine manufacturer and could see these huge, white blades the size of 18 wheelers lying on the side of the role.  We could have driven our van through the posts that holds them up.  There was no moon and so we could just see them glimmering by the light of our headlights like smooth, giant dinosaur ribs.

We finally made it to our hotel (thank the Lord!) and fell into bed.