view from KOA cabin, Cortez, New Mexico
I must also acknowledge that I have become a regular customer if not necessarily a fan of two businesses that are at least politically incorrect. One is Walmart - it's one stop shopping, the prices are cheap, the service is good, and they're everywhere.
The second is KOA. As a place to camp in a tent, it is definitely not the place to go as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, but as the nights have gotten colder, we have been staying in KOA cabins and finding them a fairly good compromise between creature comfort and enjoying the outdoors. The cabins are pretty basic - a bed (we provide the bedding), a desk, night table, a couple of chairs and WIFI which is usually but not always free. There is also usually a laundromat available. There is a picnic table in front of the cabin and a swing on the porch of the cabin. You have to trundle over to the public bathrooms, which include showers, when the need arises. The price is about the same as a cheap motel, but the most important thing, as compared to sleeping in one's tent, is that the cabin contains a heater - a great advantage when the temperature is dropping into the high thirties at night. The major advantage over a motel is that one can eat out at the picnic table for both breakfast and dinner. The price of food from the supermarket is much lower than eating restaurant meals and it is just generally a more pleasant experience, since the site usually comes with a view of the beautiful scenery through which we have been driving for the past several days. There is some of the feel of camping with less of the discomfort.
Finally, just a word about camping in America in 2010. If you have no interest whatsoever in this topic, you can skip this paragraph. First, I will acknowledge that there are still a fair number of people camping in tents. I think, however, that there are fewer than there were during our trip 40 years ago. The campground industry is not very interested in tent campers. They are interested in RV's(recreational vehicles;i.e., campers and trailers). For every campground we pass on the road that provides for tenters, there are at least one or two that provide only for RV's. Even most of the campgrounds that provide space for tents are filled mostly with RV's.
These RV's are generally driven by retired people who are on the move. Some come to a particular place and stay for a week or more while visiting the surrounding area; others are traveling long distances either to see the country or to visit children and grandchildren. There may be a recession in America; there are certainly many older people hurting financially; but there is also a population of older retired people who are well off and have the energy as well as the financial means to take to the road in one of these RV's.
We spent a lazy morning around our cabin and didn't get out until almost 11:00. We started with a visit to the Cortez Cultural Center. We wanted to find out if a convention in town this weekend for Indian trading post traders would be of interest to us. At first it seemed that it would just be a trade convention really designed for the traders and not for the general public. There was, however, an exhibit on the wall at the rear of the Cultural Center with quotes from long time trading post operators and newspaper articles about the trading posts which were more interesting than I had anticipated. The trading post operators evidently once held a unique niche in the life of the Indian community. They were the Indians primary contact with the outside world. While some traders apparently exploited the Indians with whom they dealt, others developed close relationships, both financial and personal with their Indian clientele and helped them to navigate the white world around them. Now, however, this is a dying institution. Indians come and shop at the same Walmarts as do their white neighbors, and they have other sources for marketing the arts and crafts they create. The trading post has been reduced to just one more outlet for the sale of Indian jewelry and pottery. Instead of going to the convention, however, I settled on purchasing a CD of trader stories, which Elise and I will listen to in the car.
ladder to cliff dwelling of Indians
We then took a lunch break. We passed up a new restaurant serving Mexican food and ended up at a more modest but also more local "home cookin'" place. As soon as we were seated, the "chef" a tall black man with a haircut like mine and a soft southern drawl, put down a sample of his barbecued beef - the special for the day - on our table. He explained, "This comes with baked beans, my grandma's secret recipe - special. I also make a great brisket, but I'm sold out of that." The beef was, in fact, delicious, and I immediately ordered the "special" on fry bread,which is an Indian bread which is sort of a cross between regular bread and funnel cake. We'd had it before at the Pow Wow in Panguitch, so I knew I would like it - which I did.
Our next stop (at last) was Mesa Verde National Park. the park itself was located on a large mesa and was more green than any of the other parks we had seen (I guess that's why they call it Mesa Verde - duhhh).
cliff dwellings of prehistoric Indians
The main feature of the park, however, is not the scenery but the fact that there are considerable remains of the cliff dwellings of Indian groups who had lived there during the 12 and 13 hundreds. We took a half hour tour with a park ranger to the Cliff Palace which was a major site for this prehistoric community of Indians. To get there we had to go down a long series of steps. On the way out, we climbed ladders similar to the ones the Indians had used to reach their village. The park ranger explained various aspects of the life and culture of these people and it was an interesting and educational experience.
Afterwards we took a short walk on another trail and saw other cliff dwellings from a distance and also looked down into Soda Canyon, so named because of the white color of the rocks.
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