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We’ve been exploring the Colorado Plateau for about two weeks now, and I’ll admit that my geography skills are such that I didn’t even know this place existed until we drove all over it. It’s essentially an elevated expanse of land that stretches across parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, and it is jam-packed with stunning rock formations. Parts of it are also very scarcely populated, so the nights are incredibly dark, which makes for pretty spectacular star gazing.

Sadly, we haven’t been able to capture any of the starry nights yet, but Toyo’s working on figuring it out. In the meantime, here are some quick notes and pictures of the places we’ve been:

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
This is one of the stops I anticipated most eagerly because it’s so different from the other national parks, as most of the sites were man-made about 800 years ago. Ancestral Puebloans built rooms and homes out of caves a few dozen feet below the tops big mesas, where they farmed. I think it’s so inventive and genius, it’s hard to believe the idea didn’t catch on.

The cliff dwellings — built from simple-yet-sturdy bricks, and series of ladders and rock holds — are still around to see and walk through … absolutely incredible.

View from the top of a mesa.

Picnic on the cliff.

Our tour group making the first ladder climb. There were about 3 ladders and a few tunnels to crawl through to see the cliff dwelling. People were smaller 800 years ago…

Remotely representing Team Rayma Dog on Miles For Moffitt race day!

This was the best selfie we could get … we might one day do a series on all the bad ones because it’s truly amazing how terrible we are at these pics.

Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Canyonlands was lovely and really, really in the middle of nowhere. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one, and also inform you that this is by far the most remote camping Tony and I have ever done. We took a dirt road to a place called Hamburger Rock, placed our $10 nightly fee into a freestanding box, and called it a campsite. There were about 10 tent campers not too far away but other than that, nothingness for miles.

Another terrible selfie…

Campsite.

Hamburger Rock, if you look to the left, you can see our RV.

Really lovely lighting at our campsite just before sunset.

Moab, Utah, and Arches National Park, Utah
At the recommendation of a checkout lady at Target (you read that right) we decided to stay a few nights in Moab, and make the short drive to Arches, for a little taste of civilization after the gloriously quiet night at Hamburger Rock.

Moab was a great little town, with a fun brewery and eclectic crowds but it’s hard to identify why it appealed to settlers. Here’s an actual conversation we had pondering this mystery:

Christina: “Do you think this is a place where, if you were travelling west in a covered wagon, at like 5 miles per hour, you’d get here, stop and say, ‘This it is. We made it.’?”

Toyo: “I feel like this is a place where someone said, ‘I’m done, guys. Just go on without me. I might catch up later.’ Everyone else was like, ‘But this is the Oregon Trail, and we aren’t in Oregon yet.’ But Lewis and Clark be damned, he didn’t want to go any farther.

“Then, because no one else was here, he claimed all the land and made a bunch of money.”

Christina: “People paid a bunch of money for this land?”

Toyo: “Yeah, over the generations. He got the Arches, and all this stuff around them, then sold it off to all the people here. The only problem is the government took a lot of it.”

Christina: “The government? What did they take?”

Toyo: “Well, the national parks. They got the Arches and Canyonlands. That’s premium real estate. Scenic.”

Christina: “And then what?”

Toyo: “The original settler kept the rest and passed it down to his kids and grandkids, and more people came and all that … So we got nothing else to make more margaritas, huh?”

The store only had 6 limes; all were juiced.

The sights in Arches were very impressive. There are a few places where I feel like the rocks might be defying gravity, but I’ll leave that up to the physicists and geologists to determine. I just think they’re neat to look at.

Staying healthy while living on the road is no joke. Keeping tidy is tough, too, because my hair is everywhere. All. The. Time.

I doubt I’m shedding more now than usual, but living in close quarters brings me face to face with every individual strand of hair that abandons my scalp and the volume is both gross and terrifying. It’s back almost immediately after I sweep and I’m about to just give in and live in a giant hairball on wheels.

Then there’s scurvy, which can be a real danger if we’re not careful.

Because we’re choosing to camp mostly in remote sites in and near national parks, we’re almost never within a reasonable driving distance to grocery stores. There are small shops that stock essentials such as snacks, bread, peanut butter and wine — thank you Jesus — but for fresh produce, you’ve got to hit a real grocery.

Thus far, we’ve handled this by buying a few days’ worth of fresh produce when we stay in big cities and keeping plenty of frozen veggies on hand. I thought that was a reasonable strategy until Sunday when we went skiing — yes SKIING, crazy! — and I obsessed over a woman’s spinach salad, then proceeded to think of nothing else for the next two days.

I suspect her husband noticed my creepy staring but quickly assessed me as a non-threat after a quick glance at my outfit — made up of every piece of water-resistant hiking attire I own and zero ski clothes because we packed not realizing skiing in May was an option. And as if he needed more assurance that they could easily get away from the crazy lady in mismatched beiges, I had already fallen during the first run down the “easy” slope and hurt my knee, so I was extra nonthreatening.

Anyway, I only had eyes for crisp, leafy goodness after that, so we’ve adjusted our shopping plans from now on, and will make a point to stop at a real grocery store twice per week. Hopefully if we park the rig far from the entrance and shop quickly, we can avoid infuriating the locals by only taking up eight parking spaces for a short time.

This experience has made me sympathetic, though, to the struggles of people trying to eat a balanced diet while living in rural areas. That’s no easy task, friends. I thought about this during a recent drive and reasoned that most people who live far from grocery stores probably live on a farm or ranch and therefore can grow produce on their own, but surely land and weather conditions limit what they can grow, right? One can only eat so many carrots before getting real bored, or real orange.

It’s easier for me now to see why we have an obesity problem in America, considering the easy access to junk food and comparatively poor availability of produce. Plus, fruit and veggies at small local grocers is pretty expensive, so that’s the icing on the cake that we should only eat in moderation.

But enough about that, I know why you’re really reading this, mom, you want to know where we’ve been! Over the past week and a half or so, we’ve been to Santa Fe, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Central City, Colorado — which was really just a place to stay that allowed us to visit my friend Beckie, and her husband and daughter, and also ski at Arapahoe Basin — Ouray and Telluride. We’ve posted up in Ouray a little longer than planned so that my bruised knee can finish healing, then we’re on to another national park tomorrow.

Enjoy the pics!

Look at these cuties!

The deer at the park were super friendly, about two dozen walked through our camp the first night.

Sledding down the dunes — so fun!

It’s hard to capture the size of the dunes with a camera, but this maybe comes close. You literally can’t see the huge mountains behind them when you’re in the dunes.

This creek runs in front of the dunes a few months out of the year. Nice and chilly from the snow melt.

Campsite at Great Sand Dunes National Park.

Arapahoe Basin.

Styled by poor packing choices.

Don’t let the confidence fool you, he’s skiing in hiking gear, too. He just doesn’t fall like I do.

I avoided this scene completely by waiting out the snow in the lodge.

Ouray main street.

Campsite in Ouray.

Our campsite in Ouray … still learning about shutter speed but look at that big moon!

River behind our campsite.