West Slope Is the Best Slope

West Slope Is the Best Slope is something people say who live on the Western Slope of Colorado, which I now know (because I’ve asked Tracy a million times) means west of the Continental Divide—and not east of it, which is called the Front Range. We were on the Western Slope at Colorado National Monument and in Fruita, and when we spent a week in Grand Junction, then when we moved south near Telluride, and now as we’re closer once again to the Four Corners at Mesa Verde National Park. A lot’s been going on in this time, so I’ll try to catch up in a quick fashion.

Grand Junction

We stayed in a fancy RV park in Grand Junction because it was near the House of Diesel, which turns out to be a knowledgeable place to get your transmission worked on. We’ll probably come back another time (and we probably need to).

I took this photo of our campground in Grand Junction, but a lot is going on here. From the bottom is the Colorado River, then the row of tiny houses and Airstreams this campground rents out, then the RV spots, then parts of Grand Junction. I did five loads of laundry and took two showers while the shop had the truck! For those of you counting, that’s one more shower than I had taken for all of April and May combined. And you know what, I was okay with that.

Palisade

Our last day there we hit a bluegrass festival in Palisade just a few miles away, with mixed results. Groovy parts were the bands, like this small local one that played acoustic sets while the electricity was shut to the main stage as storms came through. A young man filming this band has redefined the Colorado Dude scene for us with his comment, “That set was legendary.”

(Colorado Dudes are different from California Dudes and from Texas Dudes. They have lots of tattoos and wear trucker caps ironically and declare small bands that play acoustic sets as legendary.)

Non-groovy parts were the storm, then security that made us wait to reenter the venue until well after the last bits of storm were over. By then all the bands were running late, and we decided to stay late, too, so we could hear the final band, the Kitchen Dwellers

By then, though, we’d heard news that the hail storm that missed us at the music thing had hit Grand Junction, and that got us worried about Banjo and the trailer. Banjo gets afraid when it simply rains; we couldn’t imagine how freaked out she’d be facing hail in the aluminum trailer all by herself.

And yes, what about the trailer? Worst case, maybe a skylight had been busted and the trailer was full of hail. Which would make towing out the next morning tricky, and we had already been told by the park that our site was taken by someone else the next morning. And what might be left of our home to tow out? We imagined all of this as we saw photos on phones of people shoveling giant hail from sidewalks in Grand Junction.

What we found when we got back was that Banjo had not lost her mind, and the trailer was not full of hail, so big relief there. This chunk of hail was in the campground, hours after the event. How big was the hail before it melted?

In the morning in the daylight we saw that the skylights are indeed damaged, as are the back panels and roof panels, plus a few random pieces of violence were done to items we’d left outside. Now, hail being bad news for Airstreams is an old story (legendary, you might say). So, we shall see what happens. At least we could tow out the next morning, which we did.

South of Telluride

We headed back south, into views that Tracy has been itching to show me. We’re here among the mountains in early enough summer that the weather is fine but the mountains are still capped in snow, which is a legendary combination, just like the Dudes live by here. These are the San Juan Mountains, I believe.

We stayed one night in a San Juan National Forest campground, which was full of early summer life.

Mesa Verde

The next day: back to the four corners region, for the largest set of Ancestral Hopi dwellings in the country. Mesa Verde National Park has something like 5,000 dwelling sites, 600 of which are on cliffs.

We just got here yesterday and went on a ranger-led tour of the Long House site this morning, so I’m still getting my bearings.

I can say that, of the handful of cultural and archaeologically significant sites we’ve visited this summer (Gila, Chaco, Bandelier, El Malpais, Canyonlands, heck what am I missing?), this ranger-led tour provided the most information, by the most congenial and professional ranger yet.

I won’t reveal my terrible memory by trying to explain all the unique facets of the Long House here.

But I will say that I was proud of myself for climbing two ladders, for touring way up in the shade under the cliff overhang, and then walking out of the canyon once again in the sun.

I hung back after and asked the ranger about how in the world a layman like me can make sense of all the historic dwellings and pictographs and petroglyphs I’ve seen so far this summer, and he recommended a display in a state park in Utah that does just that. And when I said I wouldn’t be that way again this summer, danged if he didn’t airdrop to me photos from his visit there.

Now there’s a legendary Colorado dude, and I don’t mean that ironically, for once.