Colorado, Utah and Arizona
June 17-29, 1954
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Our trip began and ended in the Commons (student cafeteria) on the University of Texas Campus. Bill and Nona had taken Billy and Barbara down to Nona's mother in San Benito Friday night and then had driven to Austin Saturday morning. They picked me up and we ate lunch in the Commons before hitting the road for Anson, where we spent Saturday night with Oscar and Iris Roberson (sister and husband) and Mother. Iris stuffed us with a delicious meal, topped off with mouth-watering homemade strawberry shortcake and homemade ice cream (compliments of Oscar, who makes the best homemade ice cream I ever ate!). Sunday we had a very early breakfast and left at 5:20 a.m. for Durango, Colorado. The trip up was largely uneventful. Since we had three good (?) drivers, stops were few. Bill drove until one tank of gas was about gone, Nona took over for another tank's worth, Tom drove during the third tank full, and then Bill took us on into Durango. Stop for lunch? Gosh, no! We had sandwich makings in the car, so we ate in the car as we rolled along.
We crossed into New Mexico at Clovis and went up through Santa Fe, which we went through at noon. Since we didn't need gas, we didn't stop in Santa Fe, but we could see it what a quaint town it is just from driving through it. The streets are quite narrow, and the architecture is almost exclusively adobe. Up until this time, the country has been very similar to West Texas, but when we reached the Rocky Mountains running through northern central New Mexico (specifically the Sangre de Cristo Range and the San Juan Mountains), we came to some of the most beautiful country that I saw at any time on our trip. At the risk of being annihilated for the disloyalty to Colorado, I will dare to say that I liked it even better than Colorado.
We crossed the Continental Divide at 3:10 p.m. Sunday and reached our day's destination, Durango, Colorado, well before sundown, and here we spent several delightful days with Mr. & Mrs. A. H. Danforth (Peaches and Skipper, Nona's maternal aunt and her husband) on their country place outside of Durango several miles. Monday we were pretty tired from our previous day's journey, so we stuck pretty close to the house. In the morning we picked 72 pounds of pie cherries out of the Danforth's cherry orchard, and naturally about as many got into our mouths as into our buckets. This was my first experience at picking cherries, and just about the first experience at eating fresh cherries, too -- we weren't very hungry at lunch! In the afternoon we did a little exploring of the Danforth place: they are situated in the Animus Valley between high cliffs and have the Animus River winding through their land, and a lovely place it is, too!
On Tuesday, the 20th, we went to Mesa Verde National Park, in the southwest corner of Colorado. Here we went through two Pueblo cliff dwellings -- ruins -- called Spruce Tree Ruin and Cliff Palace. These cliff dwellings were occupied by Indians dating back to the time of Christ; due to a very long drought, they were abandoned by the occupants before Columbus discovered America. This is particularly hard to believe when you see the almost-perfect condition of the original mud walls and lodge poles. The most damaged portions of the dwellings was the kiva, an underground room used in the religious rites of the men (women were not allowed). Many of the kivas had caved in, but enough of them were left intact for the damaged ones to be reconstructed. We descended into one of these kivas, but of course there was nothing to see except a round room with fire hole and air vent. However, it is surprising that architecture of any sort existed in such primitive cultures.
Wednesday, the 21st, saw us begin a whirlwind trip through four states. We started bright and early and crossed from Colorado into Utah early in the morning. That Utah country is really rugged! Bare hills, red sand, jutting rocks, deep gorges -- it looks as if the whole country was just tossed up into the air and then let to fall, willy nilly. Of course, we saw only the extreme south-west corner of Utah -- other parts of Utah may not be so wild. There were two tourist items in Utah: the Goosenecks of the San Juan River and Monument Valley. The former was quite impressive, being ribbed black cliffs reminiscent of goosenecks, formed by the serpentine windings of the San Juan River. Bill was also quite enthusiastic about Monument Valley, but Nona and I expressed some disappointment, probably because we had expected too much. We approached these rather interesting towering rocks, and I thought, "Well, the introduction to Monument Valley is nice; the rest must really be pretty good," and then we were through Monument Valley and on the other side -- what I had thought was just the outskirts of the Valley, was all there was to it, en toto! A word must be said about the roads in this part of the country. Through most of Utah and down almost to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, we had dirt roads, then unimproved roads, and finally on what-the-heck-are-you-doing-here? roads.
The Grand Canyon! Tarrah! Tarrah! Bill says that the really great things are never disappointing but always measure up, and that's certainly true of the Grand Canyon! Nona said she would slug the first guy who said, "Golly, what a gully!" and it's true that such a trite expression does not even begin to do justice to it. All you want to do is stand still in reverent silence and drink in the vastness until you are simply lost in it. We got to the canyon about 4:00 p.m., so had time to see much of it before dark; we spent the night (21st) in the auto camp on the rim. We planned to get up the next morning and see the canyon by sunrise, but we flatland sleepyheads overslept! However, it was just as well, for when we arose we found the sun was hidden behind heavy mists. We saw a little more of the canyon -- agreeing that you could never tire of such sights, unlike lesser marvels -- and then lit out for home, going the southern route.
First stop was the Petrified Forest, which was an interesting spectacle. Nona warned Bill and me not to expect petrified trees that really look like trees -- i.e., erect with branches and everything -- for she had been disappointed in that as a child, and it is true that if you are expecting an actual forest, you will be sorely disappointed. Most of the petrified wood is in fairly small chunks which look like a boulder field. There are two or three big logs of petrified wood lying on the ground, and these are well worth seeing. The most beautiful of the wood is that which has been polished to show the different colors in the grain. A park ranger explained to us what causes the petrifaction of the wood and gives it its different colors: in prehistoric times, after the trees had died and fallen to the ground, mineral-bearing water seeped into the wood, and it was the minerals that petrified the wood; different minerals gave the wood different colors, which show up beautifully when the wood is polished. Although you are not supposed to pick up any of the petrified wood in the park, they do have some small pieces of the polished wood for sale, but these were quite expensive -- a piece that would make a nice paper weight cost $4.50, so I declined to buy. However, when we got back to Durango, Skipper gave me a piece of petrified wood that he had acquired from someplace, so I have a memento of the place after all.
Shortly after the Petrified Forest, we saw just a "daub" of the Painted Desert from the highway, but we did not detour for it, since it was noon, when the desert is least pretty of all times. We zoomed on into New Mexico and turned up through Gallup and eventually passed Shiprock, "lifting its bulk from the flat horizon in lines as vertical as a penthouse skyscraper's" (to quote a picture post card). Crossing from New Mexico into Colorado, we met a veritable deluge of rain, which followed us on into Durango and brought that area the best rain it had had since Peaches and Skipper had been there. This rain put the first blight on our perfect trip. We had planned to take on Friday the trip by narrow-gauge train from Durango to Silverton, but the rain put a quietus on that, so we spent the day "rained in", except for a madcap excursion out to explore the Danforth place in the rain.
Saturday saw us winging our way northward toward Denver. We made only one tourist stop, unplanned. Seeing this sign saying "Black Canyon of the Gunnison, 8 miles" pointing down a side road, we decided to take this little extra trip, since we thought we could make it in about 30 minutes. It took us two and a half hours. But we most emphatically were not sorry we spent the time, for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a sight almost to rival the Grand Canyon. (One might judge from this that maybe we are just a tiny bit partial to canyons, and one would doubtless be right!)
Nice visit with Pauline and Mayo in Denver. Picnicked Sunday afternoon and went Sunday night to Red Rocks Theater (outdoor theater set amid towering red rocks) for a performance by the Koshare Indian Dancers. This was just a little bit disappointing, for the dancers were not Indians but were boy scouts. They were good, though.
Monday saw us at what I thought was the real object of the whole trip: the YMCA camp outside Estes Park, Colorado, where Nona worked in 1950 and I worked in 1951. Bill and Nona had revisited the camp every year except one, but this was my first return visit. We went up Trail Ridge Road to Fall River Pass at the top and revisited Bear Lake, which, with Hallets Mountain in the background, forms one of the prettiest sights there -- Hallets over Bear. I square-danced in the afternoon and that evening I attended an employee party (just like old times!) while Bill and Nona went to a ranger lecture. While the college students working at the camp were nearly all new, the senior staff was nearly all the same, and it gave me a warm feeling to see the old, familiar faces. One night there, and we left at noon Tuesday. Tuesday night in Denver, Wednesday night in Anson, and home Thursday at noon to eat lunch at the Commons, where we began. Then B & N left for San Benito to pick up their children. End of a glorious vacation.
Respectfully submitted by Tom Brooks
Self-appointed recorder of the expedition
And here the journal ends.
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