Mesa Verde

Whatever you do, go to the bathroom before you get to the park entrance because they enjoy telling you after you hand them over money for an entrance fee, don't we already fund these places with taxes, that the visitors center is 15 miles away. Not straight down the road away either, like double helix hairpin turns 15 miles away. While pretending i was a race car driver and annoying cohen by crossing the rumble stips multiple times we discovered that it was hot, and it was only leading to our disproportionately arm tans. We also went against all movie wisdom and drove towards the light.

We drove the self guided loop road because the website explained that to get into the visitable cliff houses you would have to "climb a 32 ft. ladder, crawl through a 12ft.-long tunnel, and climb up a 60ft (20m) open rock face with two 10ft (3m) ladders to exit the site. " Since cohen does not have opposable thumbs, playing hide and seen in the cliff houses was out of the question. We were able to see the progression of ancient pueblo structures as the native americans moved from simple mesa top buildings to more complex excavated masonry structures and eventually moving into the cliffs and overhangs of the canyons. There is a lot of professional archaeological speculation as to why they did this but I know why, it was hot and they were looking for shade. I shall wait for my prize and some honorary letters after my name.

Cohen enjoyed owning some yucca plants and we were mostly done with our tour when we heard German children. If you don't know German children have been plaguing us where ever we go on our cruise, outings, in camp bathrooms and now at national parks. There is almost nothing worse than the whining of a pre pubescent German boy calling for his father. That was fate telling us it was time to go. The only thing that can trump it is the HIPPIES. There is such a pletora of dirty bearded hippies asking for rides everywhere the state is actually looking into a managed hunt to reduce their numbers and help reduce the stress of them on the environment. Theses hippies are delusional into thinking people without dead animals in the back of their pickup trucks would stop and deal with their 7 oversized backpacks, scraggly beards, and horrible stench. I have been doing my part to drive them back where they came from by toying with them like the Jack links beef jerky commercials show.

We hit the durango off leash dog park on our way back and cohen found friends and water. He still will not swim but he will chase small dogs into bushes and considers it his best sport. While the dogs enjoyed themselves my attention was caught by the number of people floating down the river in front of us, we saw a number of crafts pass us including, large guided rafts, kayaks, stand up paddle surf board things, two person tubes, inner tires and my favorite bikini clad girls holding a dog with a lifejacket on. I have decided that to live in this area you must apon moving into city limits show that you posess a jeep with large tires, bonus points for racks on top, a human powered river craft, double word score if your drive a schoolbus that tows said river craft, and a citation for driving under the speed limit on highways.