Friday, October 28th: Cortez to Four Corners to Goosenecks

Here we are, standing in 4 states!

The next morning, I finished up wiring up my battery condition meter and got the propane tank filled at the “Big R”, but it still took us until 12:19PM to hook up the trailer and leave. Checkout time at the Sundance RV Park is noon, so we were a little late. We calculated that the drive to Goosenecks State Park was only about 2 1/2 hours away, so we weren’t in a hurry. The road took us through the 4 corners of the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. There is a National Monument there that is administered by the Navajo Nation. The monument was a big slab of concrete with a big “+” in the center with the names of the different states in each corner. A bunch of flags on tall polls surrounded that and then a bunch of booths surrounded that where the Navajos sold their jewelry and pottery. As we stepped towards the big “+”, another couple asked if we wanted them to take our picture and we said, “Sure”. Jan thought that she had recognized their rig from Sundance and asked them if they had stayed there the night before and they had. They were also full timers and had been on the road since June as we had, but had been on several long trips before that. We talked to them for a while and compared notes on the places that we’d been, renting our houses, and the Quartzite AZ RV gathering every Jan-Feb. We bid them farewell and looked at some Navajo crafts for sale. Jan picked up a nice turquoise necklace and Christmas ornament. We also bought postcards and a magnet. There was a little shack nearby that served Indian bread. We were curious, so we stopped in to find that Indian bread was deep fried bread with a choice of sugar & cinnamon, powdered sugar, or honey topping. We chose the sugar & cinnamon. I thought it was quite good, but Jan didn’t like it that much as it was too greasy. As we drove through the Navajo Indian Reservation, we could see scattered ranch type dwellings, but the land they were on is very meager and most of the houses were run down trailers or shacks, so it looked like they were barely surviving.

The view from our trailer window

The road to Goosenecks State park is very Thelma & Louise-like. If you don’t stop at the stop sign at the end of the road, you go careening off the 1000 foot cliff. There is one pit toilette there and a dirt road that runs along the canyon rim. Another Montana 5^th wheel had taken the nearest spot, so we pulled into the next spot that was about 200 feet down along the canyon rim. We parked about 15 feet from the cliff edge, so we could see the $1M view, which we paid zip for because camping is free there! The skies there are some of the darkest in the country, so as it started getting dark, I took out my little 4" refractor telescope and started looking at the sky. Jan came out and sat in the chair for a while. She got up and walked to the back end of the trailer where she almost bumped into a man who was walking back to his tent, but stopped by to ask us if we thought if it was O.K. to move his neighbor’s generator to the other side of his truck. The man’s name was John. He was from Minnesota and was camped in a tent several hundred yards down the canyon rim from us. Apparently, a pickup truck with a camper shell had stopped to camp near his spot. A guy got out, hooked a generator, and promptly got back into his truck. John had camped out there to find some peace & quiet and now he had to listen to the guy’s generator! John had told us that he had knocked on the truck door and shouted “Hello” several times, but no response. We said that he better not try moving it as you never know who you are dealing with. We talked for a while and John went on his way back to his noisy tent.