Day 1 Flew into tiny Cortez airport on tiny plane with no bathroom. No other staff on the plane except the two pilots with open door. 19 Passenger. Smooth flight, short runway. Hiked Petroglyph Point Trail and visited Cliff Palace. Dinner in Metate Dining Room The hike is a fairly easy hike that winds along Spruce Canyon. You see only a small panel of petroglyphs, but it is probably the best hike in the park. Cliff Palace is the biggest of the ruins and was nice to start the trip out with. Dinner was very good in the Metate, but they do add 5% to the bill, which is not on the menu anywhere or on any sign, so it comes as a shock to most patrons. We overnighted in the Far View Lodge, which is great.

Day 2 We awoke to find 2 inches of snow on are car. Of course, I only packed one long sleeve shirt for this trip. We saw spruce tree house on our own without a guide. This is a good place because they let you actually go down into a Kiva. We then took the
rancher guided tour to Balcony House. This is not to hard, but would not be for everyone. It has tall ladders, and you sortof scale a small portion of a cliff. The tunnel section was shorter than what I had imagined it to be. It was a good tour. We then headed to Durango for the night. We had dinner at Steamworks Brewery. Good shrimp boil there. We overnighted in the Strater.

Day 3 Took Durango train to Tall Timber Lodge for ZIPLINING. This was the highlight of the trip. Very Very Very fun and worth every penny. Just a little scary at first. Soaring over the river is fantastic. www.soaringcolorado.com

A gourmet lunch that was very good is included. You only ride the train about 1/2 way to Silverton and then back. The train or helicopter is the only way to get there. We then drove to Monument Valley and stayed in a Cabin at the campground at Gouldings Lodge.

Day 4 Monument Valley tour with Gouldings. 3.5 hr tour and that was just about the right amount of time for us. We then drove to Natural Bridges National Monument. We were very impressed with Sipapu Bridge. We have been to Arches National Park, but this Bridge is just about as impessive. Moki Dugway is a most interesting drive. Goosenecks State Park is worth spending a little time at. We overnight in Valley of the Gods Bed and Breakfast. This is very isolated place. Breakfast was nice. Banana/French toast along with fresh fruit.

Day 5 Returned home

My son's freshman roommate hails from Cortez -- I knew it was small, but I didn't know it was THAT small

Sounds like a good trip.

My favorite part of the country. Thanks for the trip report. It makes me miss it.

SNOW?!?! In May? Brrr!

spirobulldog,

Glad to hear you had another good tirp to the southwest! I was thinking about our traveling Fodorites during the cold and rainy (snowy) Memorial Day Weekend. I had planned to go up to the Tetons to camp, but instead stayed home and cleaned out the garage!!!

Small plane to Cortez sounds interesting. Where did you connect?

More details on Valley of the Gods B&B! I've been considering it for a long weekend this fall.

Thanks for the great trip report. Hope you enjoyed V of Gods - the B&B is very isolated. (only inhabited dwelling on 380,000 acres...something like that.) We went prepared with wine and food and had incredible storms. They got more rain than they'd had in 5 yrs! The dirt road was a river!

We're looking forward to another trip soon to spend some time at Natural Bridges NM. Have checked out the overlooks but haven't done any hiking there yet.

Sounds like a fun trip!

Nice report!

We're planning our second
trip next spring so I've
saved yours for reference.
(although we fly into Denver
since we visit friends first)

Question:
How late must one go to the
SW corner to avoid snow?

I think it was pretty unusual for snow this late. It only snowed on us in Mesa Verde. The next two days were just a little on the cool side, but actually perfect for hiking.

We connected on the small plane in Denver. Great Lakes Airlines. They fly into Moab and Page as well. United and Frontier partners with them.

We are not really into Bed and Breakfast. But, we wanted to try this one. They only have 4 rooms, so it would never be crowded. they server breakfast around 8:00 each morning. They serve an evening meal about one time per week for an additional fee. It is really more of a place to relax. I typically don't really get into that while on vacation. The owners told me that get very little traffic there in the winter. There was a repeat customer there from England. I believe most people spend more than 1 day there. We were the only citizens of the US on our Monument Valley tour. Lots of Europeans like to see the West. The Moki Dugway is only about 2 miles from the B&B. Goosenecks are about 8 miles, Natural Bridges about 25 miles, Monument Valley about 25 miles. I would stay at Valley of Gods and tour Monument Valley from there if it were to do over.

Sipapu Bridge looks much more amazing from the bottom than from the overlook. It has a huge opening. It is equally impressive as anything at Arches. The other two bridges are somewhat of a let down after seeing Sipapu first. We only hiked the .5 mile or so to each bridge from the overlook. To do it right you should probably hike the entire creek bed to the loop. The bed wasn't dry when we were there. It had a little trickle flowing through it.