Day 13

Tuesday June 16, 1998

We were up early this morning with a plan to leave Tohatchi by 7:00am. We didn't quite make it. It was 7:30 before we pulled out of the church parking lot. We spent several minutes saying goodbye to our new friends and family. It was sad to have to leave them, but we all wondered what was ahead of us that day. Below are some of the pictures that we took before departure. Hardy, Julie, and Ryan arrived just as we were pulling out in the vans.

From left: Srs. Delores, Pat, and Millie

Entire group on church steps:

We travelled north from Tohatchi on Hwy. 666 to Shiprock, NM and then headed west toward Four Corners where four states, (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah) all come together at a single point. It is the only place in the U.S. that this happens. Below is a picture of Joe Seaver spanning all four states at once by doing the crab walk!

For more info about Four Corners see the following site:
http://www.cyberport.com/silveradobe/region.html

After leaving Four Corners, we travelled northeast toward our next destination of the day, Mesa Verde. We could see the lush, green mesa jutting up from the floor of the dry plains for several miles before we finally arrived at the park entrance. Fr. John had to drop off the trailer at the park entrance before we proceeded up the steep incline to the top of the mesa. The road to the top provided many spectacular vistas across the valley floor to the majestic, snow capped Rocky Mountains that were over 100 miles away:

Mesa Verde was an awesome place to visit. We admired many different cliff dwellings that were constructed about 1200AD. It is hard to imagine the amount of work that was put into building all of these adobe dwellings. From one spot, twelve seperate cliff dwellings could be seen at one time. Below are a few pictures!

A complete on-line book about Mesa Verde can be found at the address listed below. It is a very impressive document!!
http://www.mesaverde.org/smvf/p1.html

We left Mesa Verde at about 3:30pm and headed east toward the Wolf Creek Pass. We climbed to 10,800 ft above sea level! The scenery was spectacular. We finally stopped at the top of the pass around 5:30pm. Below a re a few of the pictures from the top of the snow covered "Great Divide".

For more info on the Great Divide follow this link:
http://best4x4.landrover.com/adventures/greatdivide/history/indian.html

We headed down the east side of the mountains and started across over one hundred miles of the "Colorado High Plains". It is over 7500 ft above sea level and is bordered on the north by the Sangre de Christo (Blood of Christ) mountains. As we descended from the High Plains darkness was falling and we were still almost 100 miles from our destination in Pueblo, CO. We had to scrap plans to stay in a campground northwest of Colorado Springs because we would arrive too late. Instead we stayed in a Holiday Inn in Pueblo where we met Jill Kelly who is doing a summer internship in Denver. It was indeed a long but eventful day!

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