Road Trip 2018: Day 08 - Mesa Verde & Natural Bridges

Blanding - Just another tourist town - with not so much of tourist traffic. Maybe because the places around here are not as popular as Bryce and Arches.

We had seen so many rock formations in the last few days, we decided to change the plan a bit. I had somehow missed adding a National Park - Mesa Verde (again - my first miss was Antelope Canyon). So got mentally psyched up for some marathon drives today and started off early to Mesa Verde in Colarado. 100 miles away to the entrance and another 50 miles inside the park to the archaeological sites - a total of 300 miles round trip via UT191 North and UT491 East. Saw some wonderful sights of how the Pueblo Indians lived around 1200AD.

From Mesa Verde, we returned to Blanding and continued on wards to the Natural Bridges National Park via UT191 South, UT95 West and UT275 West - about 150 miles . We made it an hour before the Visitor Center was closed for the day. Some mini hikes to see the natural rock bridges in the canyon and we were back on the road.

The drive to Page took about three and half hours, about 200 miles via UT261 South, UT163 South to AZ98 West. On the way we passed by "The Greatest Open Air Museum in the World" - The National Monuments. Fantastic monolith structures - gigantic in size. We reach Page around 10pm Utah time - but it's only 9pm in Page - we had gained an hour - but were so tired, I immediately fell asleep.

For my Desi friends - मासूम लोगों को गाँव ले जा कर, बडा पथ्थर दिखा कर, उल्लू बनाते है उलूरु मे।

(गाँव in Telugu is ఊరు, so ఉల్లు + ఊరు = ఉల్లూరు). We realized how the Australian's are making fools of innocent tourists and minting tourist dollars from marketing Aiyer's rock/Uluru - when we have these fantastic National Monuments out in the open for all to see - free of cost.

Day stats: 650 miles 8.5 hours total drive time (not counting time sightseeing)