Well we’ve been in Mancos for a month and we leave tomorrow. We had quite a list of things we wanted to see from our base here. Yesterday we checked the last thing off the list. We rode the train from Durano to Silverton. Will start with a photo dump from the train ride and work backwards. We rode up on the train in an outdoor gondola and rode back on the bus. We had a to find a baby sitter for Finn since we were gone for about 10 hours. We finally found a local woman named Pam and she came a stayed with Finn and Theo in our trailer. She works remote to she hooked up to the wifi here and did her day job while watching our fur babies. Here is her check in picture followed by our train trip pictures:

A few days earlier we went to visit the museum of the Vally of the Ancients right outside Cortez. It was an amazing museum really structured to teach about the history of the whole region. After we checked out the museum we walked up to a local pit house site located above the museum. It was well worth the visit.

A couple of days before that we went back to Mesa Verde to visit the museum there and do the Mesa Top Loop witch takes you through several different sites that were excavated up there and represent different building from 600 through 1200AD.

A few days before that we drove about an hour and a half to get to Hovenweep. It isn’t that far as the birds fly but it is not easy to get there by vehicle. It was worth the drive to see it. Side note: we decided to take Finn…big mistake. It was only in the low 80’s but this pup is low to the ground so he gets all the ground heat. We hiked for a while and he just stopped and laid down under a tree in the shade. He was done! I ended up carrying him back to the truck. We did get to see most of the structures Hovenweep is known for.

Sorry for the long post but as you can see we have been busy. We got Betty all cleaned up and loaded for our departure tomorrow. Joel got the tires all inflated to the right pressures after sitting here for a month. While he was doing that I got the Frey all cleaned up on the inside and got the last load of laundry done. Had to unexpectedly wash the sheets because Finn puked in the bed last night lol. Now we are all cleaned up too and looking forward to a light dinner at the Boathouse where we ate on my birthday. Tomorrow am we head out to Bernanillo and then on to Amarillo. Both are 2 night transit stops before we reach our destination in Oklahoma to see Joel’s dad and then hit the Hill Country and Cedar lake that we missed in the spring because of Betty’s issues. Looking forward to it! Talk again soon from Oklahoma.