The West is The Best

So I have realized recently that just because I'm back from Tanzania doesn't mean my blog has to die a slow death. There are many more adventures in my future and I intend to write about them so why not keep this going? I decided that I'll try to post more frequently, whether it be film reviews, blurbs about weekend trips, or whatever. So here goes...
Despite being semi-settled in full-time jobs in Flagstaff, Zach and I get "the hunger" to travel quite often. We try to resolve this with weekend trips to places we can get to in a few hours. Never having lived in the southwest, there is SO MUCH new stuff for us to see. This past weekend we had an awesome time in and around Durango, Colorado!
We left as soon as I got out of work on Friday at 5. It was about a five hour drive, straight through the Navajo and Hopi Reservations and diagonal across Four Corners from Arizona into Colorado. All we could see before it got dark was the reservations...which basically is super-desolate-looking land with a few "towns" which are basically clusters of shacks with a couple gas stations and liquor stores around. You can definitely tell the US government strategically picked the worst land possible and was like "Here Navajos, you can have ALL THIS!!!!" Go us. Anyway, we stopped and got a $5 Little Caesars pizza which filled us both up for cheap and drove on. We arrived at our couchsurfing host's house around 10:30, dropped our stuff of, and went downtown. It was FREEZING. But we found a couple cool spots to check out. Saw a band and observed the unique Colorado style...warm but trendy clothes, leather boots and knit hats. Everyone looked like "outdoorsy folk," for good reason. We went back to our host's house and finally met her when she got back slightly after us. We stayed up talking and getting to know each other then crammed onto the tiny couch where we slept like rocks despite the cramped space.
On Saturday we woke up and headed straight to Mesa Verde National Park. It was nice to actually SEE where we were in the daytime! We were basically surrounded by mountains and streams. The gorgeous San Juan Peaks were snow-capped and glorious. They looked so big it's hard to believe the Rockies dwarf them! We drove up this awesome windy road to the top of Mesa Verde with excellent views all around us. Being the off-season, there was hardly anyone in the park but we still got to drive around and see different cliff dwellings and archealogical sites around the park. We went on the tour of one specific dwelling and actually got to climb down into one of the lower rooms. It was awesome. I was super mad at myself for completely forgetting my camera (not at all like me)!
We got done with Mesa Verde around 3pm and booked it back to Durango cause we were STARVING!!!! We had only eaten the cookies and pumpkin bread I packed as snacks. Luckily Durango is known as "the Napa Valley of beer" and is home to four awesome microbreweries. We randomly decided on one because it was the first to pop up on my UrbanSpoon iPhone app. It must have been fate cause this place was AWESOME. It was called Steamworks Brewery and we loved it. Great decor and atmosphere. The floor was chalkboard painted so kids were coloring on it despite how shells from the free peanuts were dropped everywhere. They had more brews than any microbrewery I'd been to. And the food was AWESOME. I had a Southwest Veggie Burger with Cajun Fries and Zach had a Cheesesteak with Jalapeno Mashed Potatoes. SO GOOD!!! And every beer on the list sounded amazingly unique. The ones we tried were definitely stellar. The best one was one Zach was really unsure about getting but it turned out to be crazy good. It was called "Prescribed Burn" (southwest reference!!!) and was brewed with chiles in it. So it left this awesome subtle but spicy flavor on your tongue while still being refreshing. Seriously, we were in love with this place. I would drive to Durango once a week just to go there, haha. Steamworks, you won us over. After stuffing our faces we walked around town poking into all the cool shops. Lots of outdoors stuff and hippie-style jewelry and clothing shops. I got a good hat for snowboarding. We did hang out with our hosts a little at their house and tried to do stuff in town that night but we were SO TIRED we went to bed at like 11.
Sunday was another really awesome day. We finally got to spend some time with our hosts. Let me just say, I LOVE couchsurfing. I've never had a bad experience. Really, almost every experience I've had has been awesome. It's such a great way to meet awesome people and share experiences and make friends all over the world. Our hosts in Durango were no exception. There were 4 housemates that we really met: Naima-a really cool outdoorsy girl who had done a lot of traveling and WWOOFing and had great stories. Sage-what a CHARACTER! He was one of the biggest hippies I've ever met...he was literally like a yoga master and a self-taught herbalist. He had all these jars of herbs he'd gathered in the woods and he knew how to use them all for natural cures to ailments and stuff. He was really interesting. Matt and Brittany-they were two hardcore rockclimbers who had just gotten done living out of their truck for the whole summer and fall traveling around the west climbing. They were working for a couple months in Durango and then heading off on a drive all the way down through Mexico to Central America, climbing all the way. All of them did yoga to wake up in the morning and were the kind of crunch-granola-nature people that I LOVE. That's just scratching the surface. I love how many awesome people we've met in our couchsurfing travels. So on Sunday we ate breakfast with everybody and then went on a hike on the Colorado Trail. It runs from Durango all the way to Denver. It was Naima who took us and Sage came along "to gather herbs" (I'm not kidding!!!! He actually found a redroot bush and talked to it to assure it he wasn't going to hurt it then sang a Navajo song while digging up a root). So we took about a 2.5 hour hike that led us across this beautiful rocky Colorado creek then about 1 mile up switchbacks to the top of this mountain. There was a lot of snow on parts of the trail and it was beautiful. Words can't express how beautiful the view was once we got the top and sat with our feet off the cliff. I wish I had had my camera!!! But pictures can't express it either, really. It was breathtaking. We then jogged back down the mountain to warm up and get down faster, found Sage behind a rock and went to get free lunch in a Durango park thanks to the awesome organization Food Not Bombs. I had never heard of it but it's apparently a big organization present in most US cities that collects donations from restaurant leftovers and gives out really good free vegetarian food once a week. So we filled up on pizza, soup, and bread and met some of Naima's friends in the park before we had to jump in the car to head back. So all in all, Durango was AWESOME!!!! We were so grateful to our hosts for putting us up and showing us a good time.
We of course didn't want to go home so we turned the drive into another cool thing. We decided to add about 25 miles and drive through Monument Valley in Utah. Oh man, we weren't sure we would make it by sunset so we had to drive pretty fast and pray we'd get there. But the drive was spectacular. So many awesome rocks. We kept thinking "Oh, this must be the famous part" but then a few minutes later it would get even better. When we passed the Mexican Hat rock I remembered it! I know the last time I was there I was so young but that silly sombrero-shaped rock formation stuck with me. We drove through the Valley of the Gods and then got to the most famous area, Monument Valley, just as the final light was fading from the sky. The sunset made all the different layers of rocks on the horizon different shades of purple as we approached. So awesome. I sound like a broken record with my "awesome"s and "amazing"s but I really cant find words to describe it. Monument Valley, you gotta see it.
So all in all a fun-filled and refreshing Colorado weekend!! It reminded me of why I'm glad to be out here---so many new and unexplored (by me) western desitinations are only a few hours away!