Driving Around Durango

Day 7: August 7, 2017: Durango, CO: --

After sleeping in until 8:00, unheard of with Opa, we decided to get up and start to plan our day. Mesa Verde was the first stop for the day. It was a pretty short ride from camp, the parking lot was packed but, we had no trouble parking. Went to the gift shop to look for a bumper sticker. After fighting our way through the thick crowd, I found the bumper stickers and a replacement shirt for Opa's shirt that got a grease stain on it last night. It was perfect: neon/high-vis green, synthetic/athletic fabric, long sleeves. Opa bought it with our stickers- he stepped into the men's room to try it on, he said it fit, too.  We left the crowd and began to make our way towards the abandoned village. After a wonderful Ducati rider took our picture, we wandered down the trail to the overlook. Turns out you now need tickets and a guide to go into the village. First available tour was at 3pm. That just wouldn't work with our timeline or be all that great for Opa. We passed. made our way back to the rigs and drove around the park for a while, before heading back towards Durango. Filled up on fuel and made another little side trip to Four Corners. After about 30 minutes, I was so thankful that I had thought to bring and fill up both water bottles. It was up to 104 degrees and we couldn't move fast enough to get some decent air behind the fairing. Once we were parked, we noticed this line over 50 yards long! People were waiting in line to have thweir pictures taken on the medallion of the Four Corners. Opa and I just walked to the side, waited for it to be empty, snapped our shot and wandered off to look at all of the goods that the vendors had. It wasn't until the very last vendor that we found a bumper sticker. He saw our rigs when we parked. As we left, we noticed that he put someone else in charge of his stand and had come to look the rigs over. While having a short discussion with him, three other riders had come by to look. After about 15 minutes, it was getting too hot to not be moving. With that, we were back on our way towards Durango.
About 30 minutes outside of Durango, the skies got really dark. There was no way we would beat the storm. I was nervous, my first time in the rain. The rain started to drop, it was light, cool. It was so refreshing to go from blistering sun and dry heat to this cool rain and 75 mph winds brushing against the raindrops on my skin. It stayed cool and shady all the way back to camp. Back at camp we found out that the owner and the staff had become fascinated with our setup and wanted to come to talk with us and check out our set-up. We managed something for dinner, Opa came back from his shower and changed out of his fresh new shirt into one that he had packed. Tossed his new shirt to me, "It doesn't fit, sleeves are too short." Now, I own that neon green shirt. He tried it on earlier that day, everything fit, apparently, he didn't think about the length of the sleeves. Oh well.
Tomorrow- Grand Junction.