Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde and more — Sept. 2021

 

Delicate Arch (on the left) in Arches National Park

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

This tour took us to Canyonlands, Arches, and Mesa Verde National Parks, a narrow gauge railway ride, New Mexico's Ghost Ranch and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. It was supposed to include Taos Pueblo, but that is still closed.

We began with our first flight since COVID and an overnight stay in Salt Lake City. Our first stop the next day was Dead Horse Point State Park, followed by Canyonlands National Park, where the Green River joins the Colorado River. We took the Island in the Sky scenic drive to Grand View Point.

We continued to Moab and began early the next day lining up for nearby Arches National Park.  The park has plenty of spectacular scenery. We stopped at Balanced Rock, Delicate Arch (the symbol of Utah), Landscape Arch (the longest arch in the park), and the Windows. See the photos (link above).

We left Moab via the Million Dollar Highway and, in the afternoon, the 19th-century Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. At a top speed of 18 miles per hour, this was a 3.5-hour, 45 mile bum-rattling jouncy ride along the Animas River with beautiful scenery.

The next morning, we went to Mesa Verde National Park. I remember visiting it as a child. We viewed several cliff dwellings from across canyons, and also heard a presentation at the Pithouse Archeological Site.

Unable to visit Taos, we lunched at Ghost Ranch, and stopped at the sanctuary in Chimayo on our way to Santa Fe. I have visited Santa Fe several times, but decades ago. The highlight of our stay there was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. 

Oddly, and in a first for me, this tour did not end in the city of our return flight. The tour ended after breakfast in our Santa Fe hotel, but we then needed to get to Albuquerque on our own to fly home. We took the train from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. Next to the Santa Fe Railyard, the Jean Cocteau Cinema is owned by Game Of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. He commissioned this trompe l’oeil mural, Beauty in the Beast by John Pugh, for the back wall of the building. Click here to see its details and a better, complete picture (the last photo on the page).