Four Corners

The morning was filled with searching for Nick’s camera charger, which was finally discovered under the front seat of the car, but only after every single item of our luggage was unpacked and repacked approximately 4 times. After enjoying the breakfast on our balcony, we checked out of our lovely room and headed out for a hike down the Spruce Canyon Trail.

The Spruce Tree House was just a few hundreds yards down a steep but well maintained trail. These cliff dwellings were not as large as the ones at the Cliff Palace, but there was reconstructed kiva which Nick and I promptly climbed into. Darkness, sand in the air and the low ceiling created a rather claustrophobic atmosphere here. I could feel the sand in my mouth when we climbed back out.

A kiva is thought to have been a place of gathering for worship, and at least one can be found adjacent to most cliff dwellings and pithouses. Kivas were usually round, with the fire built in the middle of the room. The only way in and out was through a whole in the ceiling located directly above the fire. Thus anyone coming in or going out had to climb through the smoke. Each kiva also had another source of air for ventilation.

As we hiked down deeper into the Spruce Tree Canyon, we could tell we were getting closer to the water as progressively more bugs were attacking us right and left. At the lowest point of our hike the grass was growing tall and bright green all around the trail—a drastic change from the desert-like rim of the canyon. As we completed the loop and climbed out of the canyon we walked through a burned area of the mesa. Here most trees were bare and charred, and only small underbrush was green.

We made two more stops on our way out of the park. At the Far View Ruins, Nick and I climbed through a tiny door to look into a series of rooms built above ground and walked up the trail to see a dry reservoir.



Our second stop was at Park Point. A walk through very young woods just springing up after a fire led us to the edge of the cliff and some spectacular views of the Montezuma Valley and the La Plata Mountains.


The Wal-Mart in Cortez, CO was the only place I could find 100 ISO film. On our way out of Colorado we could not help but stop at the Four Corners. It is a definite tourist trap, but entirely worth the $3 per person entrance fee to be able to stand in 4 states all at the same time. The states that meet up at the Four Corners are Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona.

Small houses mostly in need of serious repair were sparsely scattered by the road. The combination of being in a desert like environment and seeing these poor living conditions created a sense of being in a foreign country. It reminded me of Honduras a little bit. Yet we were still in the United States, driving through the Indian Reservation.

We checked into our hotel in Kayenta, AZ in the early evening, and without bothering to unload the car drove over 20 miles to get our first glimpse of the Monument Valley.

Monument Valley is located on the border of Utah and Arizona, and is part of the Indian Reservation. The sun was getting ready to set when we arrived. As we slowly drove along the 18 mile unpaved scenic loop, vibrant reds and bloody oranges played on the rocks. It was both amazing and sad to see people living right next to these magnificent rock formations. Colorful laundry hung out to dry seemed incongruent with the grandeur of the landscape.




We stopped at many viewpoints along the loop, which took us over 2 hours to drive. The shadows were purple when we reached the Artists Point, and the darkness set in when we completed the loop. As I looked back something enormous was shining bright gold on the horizon. For a second I thought it was an outrageously enormous billboard still reflecting the last rays of sunlight, but it was the moon. An enormous orange moon was quickly rising above the park.