Ever since Becca was real little, she’s had a fear of horses, so it was only normal for her to be nervous of our first horseback ride. And so we left the hotel early, looked for some fruit (not as easy as you would think, the restaurant at the hotel wanted $5 for 2 brown bananas) and arrived at Justin’s Horse Rentals 20 minutes before we could even get a permit to enter the national monument. That gave our guide Patrick time to pick out horses and get them saddled up and ready. With our permit filled out, we were showed to our horses and Becca was relieved of their smaller size. We holstered ourselves up and took off into the canyon. Sherman, a once wild mustang, and Dora led the way through the clay mud. Patrick mentioned the mud was from the night’s previous rain, we teasingly said that we brought it. Sincerely, he thanked us; the rain was much needed in that area.
The horses knew the way well and stopped in the right areas for our 200% Navajo guide to point out the carvings along the canyon walls and told us stories from the life of another time. He also pointed out fresh bear tracks and when Sherman, Becca’s horse, was spooked we wondered if we would see the bear as well.
My quietness may have seemed like I was uneasy on a horse, but in fact I was enjoying the ride and taking in all the beauty. As we trotted along, Jeeps and other tour guide vehicles drove by us, and we became a part of someone’s story as they took pictures of us riding horseback. We even tried to be extra picturesque for them.
After a couple hours, our tour ended and we took the car along the north rim. We got a view of the canyon from above and continued onward to Monument Valley, Utah. This was another uneventful road (and of course we drove in and out of rain) and after a few short hours we were coming to the red rock structures that we’ve seen many times in the western movies we used to watch with our father growing up.
Still hours away from our stop point, we truck on to the four corners monument. We weren’t expecting much besides getting our picture taken while standing in all four states, yet, due to construction, the monument was closed . At least we got step foot in New Mexico.
So back into Colorado, we pulled into Cortez, where we were staying the night. We were so famished; we stopped before even finding our hotel. We picked a place with lots of cars; a good indicator the food would be good. And it was. All you can eat spaghetti for $4.95, who could complain? While we ate the rain started in yet another destination of ours, we were not surprised.
Even though we had a busy day, we got to our hotel before dark and took advantage of the laundry facilities (it’s still a bit early in our trip for dirty clothes to pile up, but I do not own enough underwear for a two week trip and who knows when another washing machine would be readily available and didn’t want to have to buy some along the way). Another night, another state;
299.7 miles
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