CO. Day1: Phoenix, Payson, Canyon De Chelly, Cortez, Mancos

Time to hit the road!

Okay, the goal for this trip... well I don't know if we really had any sort of goal. If I had to have a goal it was to have an epic trip, get away from everything and not break the bank.

We did that by making sure we were stocked up so we could eat cheaply and stay self contained.

A couple things we did for food since I get asked sometimes:

I hard boiled 9 eggs. We brought 8 normal eggs (The trick is to have a trick setup like our friend made for us. It's basically plastic easter egg's with a small patch of cotton on each inside end. You put the eggs in there and then all of the plastic eggs into a sock. There you go, a way to keep eggs from breaking while offroading!)

We brought 10 oranges. 15 Banana's. D made granola (cinnamon coconut with nuts and cranraisins!), D also made 18 blueberry muffins. I baked 5 large chicken breasts and then cut them up and put them into ziplock bags. We brought mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, sweet peppers, snow peas, celery, pretzels, prunes, dates and Anaheim peppers in ziplock bags. We bought 2 pounds of Carne Asada that marinated in the fridge for use a few nights into the trip. I also brought a 10 pack of bratwurst.

We also brought bread, peanut butter and jelly, sandwich meat and cheese. These made a lot of our lunches.
I shoe horned about 8 beers into the fridge with another 10 waiting in the case. We brought 10 gallons of water and reusable aluminum water bottles. (I also brought the starbucks Via instant coffee so I could just boil water for easy coffee each morning)

So, that's a lot of food and liquids. It all fit into our Waeco CF-50 fridge/freezer and 2 small plastic rubbermaid containers. The one with snacks we kept right next to us in the car. All in all it helped us eat well, too well says my gut, and only buy 1 meal. We didn't restock on any food the whole trip and even brought home enough food to eat for a couple days back at home.

(we're such glampers...)

Now that we have that all out of the way! Let's get out of Phoenix!!!!

We headed out at noon on Friday just as early as we could get out of work. (D was working, I was still looking for new work...)

We headed up the 87 or Beeline to Payson and then on to Heber and on northeast. Here is a map of our 1st day.

View Colorado 2011 in a larger map

This place near Heber always makes me laugh. Cabaret, but a cow on the sign....? What are they trying to say?

Cruising along the plains. We got 20 MPG in the truck all loaded down. That's better than I could hope for, but taking your time going 68MPH on the flats and 55 on the up hills makes a huge difference. We were more than happy for that.

Neat old signs along this road.

This area, although high plains, is just beautiful.

On the reservation there was some sort of ride going on. We heard it was some sort of spirit ride. Each rider had different color yarn representing different spirits. I'll leave it at that and not speculate any further so I don't butcher the meaning.

We progressed into the Canyon De Chelly area not too far from sunset.

Just the normal area around here was pretty. The kind of area that you want to spend some days exploring.

That being said there are a lot of tourists and locals. When you stop at an overlook someone usually wants to sell you something, but everyone was really nice and not pushy at all.

We spoke to a kid who lived down in the valley each summer and up on the rim each winter.

A lot of pictures, but each one seems to show the rocks slightly different. I like looking at each one...

The white house. Very cool.

Not a bad place to hang out and just gaze...

We then headed over to the furthest paved lookout which was spider rock.

As the sun sunk lower it just got more amazing.

There aren't any vendors aloud at this lookout and it's a little walk from the parking area so we just enjoyed the view quietly with some others.

This bikepacker looks like he's covered some ground. Nice bike (Surly) and nice seat!

As we left the park there was one last great view before the sun fully set.

On to Four Corners. We always hit this spot at night when traveling and I'm okay with that. We don't like paying to see things and this spot is on reservation land therefore it's locked at night.

I don't know why this sign makes me so damn happy everytime I see it. Maybe because it's BIG like the mountains here. Maybe because it's made out of wood signaling the end of the desert scape. Whatever the reason, we love it!

I must admit I drove around VERY tired for a while refusing to go to the KOA or any other "fancy" established camp ground. I hate any place with a fee, bathrooms, a table etc.

After spending a couple hours finding only private land at the end of very long dirt roads I finally, in my sleepy state, realized I just needed to pull the map and head for Forest land! There it was, just north of Mancos. About 10 miles from downtown we were on a dirt road, then a side road to that road, then an even lesser side road to that one. That's how I like it!

Not a bad place to wake up! Yes, this trip I brought my bike. Thankfully.