Spent the night in Utah in a cave up in the hills

… cave, back of a pickup truck, same diff.
This is actually October 27.  I'm sitting in a campground at Canyonlands in Utah typing this, not sure when I'll be able to post it.
Today I got to see the things I'd been looking forward to.
The drive west from Pagosa Springs is beautiful - I'm sure the drive there was nice too, but I have to do some of the route in the dark, oh well.

I headed west to Durango, and stopped and looked around there.  It's pretty touristed out, most of Historic Old Town seems to be T-Shirt stores, coffee shops and art galleries. The architecture is pretty though.

Got an oil change, and headed out.
Next stop was Mesa Verde - a cliff dweller site in the midst of some spectacular scenery.  I had been noticing that I was approaching the boundary where alpine mountains give way to more eroded mesas, and this was actually in the first major mesa formation. 

I took the museum tour - originally a CCC project, so it has that classic architecture and design.  I enjoyed the exhibit mentioning that the Native Americans who lived there had domesticated dogs and turkeys, and that the dogs were probably pets for the children...
The cliff houses are in amazingly good shape - the ranger / guide said they'd only rebuilt a small portion - it's well over 90% intact.

I climbed down in one of the kivas - not a lot of room, or light down there.

I wasn't sure where to go from there - how far into the surrounding states to go, where the interesting scenery, sites, and food would be.  Since Dove Creek, the pinto bean capital of the world, wasn't too far,  I decided to head that way, and continuer northwest, into Utah.
With 10 pounds of pintos and some Anasazi beans, which the lady assures me will be delicious, I headed into Canyonlands National Park.
Since the Green river canyons are so deep, the park is actually split in three sections, none directly accessible from the others.  I went into the Needles section, since it was closest, and I haven't been to this part.
I stopped at Newspaper Rock - a section of petroglyphs.  There's no way to date the writing on the rock, so they have no idea how long it's been there, or who did it.  They also don't know what significance it has - whether it was religious, historical, or graffiti.

I continued on to the Needles area.  It's an area of sandstone formations.

I took pictures right up until sunset - nice to be staying in the midst of the scenery.

I was hoping to camp on previous nights, but the lows were around 10 degrees, which seemed excessive.  Tonight it's only supposed to dip to the upper 20s, which should be comfortable, although my fingers are getting cold now, I won't be typing much more.
I'm in a campground surrounded by beautiful rock formations.  It's absolutely quiet, now that my neighbor has stopped running his generator.  Let's hope he's done with that for the night.  The stars are starting to come out.  There is a slight haze, but that shouldn't obscure the sky too much - this morning it was amazing.
So, it's time for my dinner of salami, BlueMont cheddar, and an apple for dessert…  Don't worry, I had a great big green chili enchilada for lunch.