We end 2021 with Operation Seeking Sunshine from Wyoming to Arizona. Over the last two years we’ve done more than a bit of Canadian-style wintering. This year, we’re looking for a bit of winter sunshine. In our final blog of the year, we skip Yellowstone Park, cruise down from Wyoming through Colorado to sunny Arizona. On the way we do a few tourist hot-spots and catch up with some great travel friends.
Skipping Yellowstone
Regular Cuthberteers may recall from our last blog that it’s not a bit of snow that is causing us to skip Yellowstone. We’re skipping it because the park is effectively closed from mid-Nov to mid-Dec whilst the rangers prepare the park for the winter season. We were quite keen to see it in the winter snow, but not quite so keen that we were prepared to sit around northern Wyoming for over three weeks waiting for the park to re-open (no offence Wyoming, you’re beautiful but limited things to do at this time of year!). Of course, had we checked the website we would know about the temporary closure, but we didn’t. Oh well! The park will still be there next year. We’ll be back.
Although we set off southbound on the mission to seek-out sunshine, we didn’t need to go all the way to Arizona to achieve said mission. No sir. It turned out that November 2021 was the warmest, sunniest, most snow-free November that Wyoming and Colorado had on record! It was glorious and unseasonably warm.
Rockies
After Wyoming, entering Colorado was another new US State for Cuthbert – his 28th State of the USA. The next few states that we plan to visit over winter will all be ‘repeat’ states, so Colorado will probably be our last ‘new’ State for a while. Our first stop in Colorado is the Rocky Mountain National Park. Our first time back in the Rockies since Alberta!
In peak summer season this is a very popular park. So much so that for 2022 they’re introducing a timed appointment system simply to enter the gate! We can’t believe our luck to arrive with warm temperatures, sunny clear skies and find only two other vehicles in the whole campsite! The hiking and the scenery is stunning. It’s obviously a little bit chilly on the very high-altitude trails, but normally at this time of year these trails would be inaccessible. The mere smattering of snow-dusting on the surrounding peaks is a small downside to the unseasonably warm conditions. Imagination is required to think how gorgeous the mountain-tops and valleys would be if the ‘normal’ amount of snow had arrived for the time of year.
Buffalo Bill
Leaving Rocky Mountain Park to the south is the crackingly scenic route 72 through the Colorado Rockies down to the town of Golden. Golden is often dwarfed by its more famous neighbour just down the road: Denver City. But Golden is famous in its own right for its association with (and being the final resting place of) Wild West Hero: Buffalo Bill Cody.
The museum at Bill’s burial site tells the fascinating story of a man who earned his nickname hunting buffalo to feed the railroad workers in the barren mid-west wilderness. His hunting antics caught the attention of the newspapers of the day and he gained a level of national notoriety, not unlike the social media stars today. Also like today’s social media stars, he decided to convert his media fame into a career in show business. He had phenomenal success with his travelling show of cowboy horsemanship and skills demonstrations from warriors of indigenous tribes.
Old Bill was waaay ahead of his time in his ‘equality’ thinking: as well as First Nation warriors in his shows, he had women ‘cowgirls’ showing off their skills; and all participants were paid the same, regardless of their race or sex. Pretty radical for the time, eh? He took them on tours not only across North America, but all the way to Europe too, where they went down a storm!!
Capital’s Capitol
The unseasonably warm weather was still with us as we arrived in Colorado State capital, Denver. The city is famously ‘one mile above sea level’ and usually snowy by December, but again we were cruelly robbed of an iconic view. The classic scene of the Denver City skyline against a back-drop of snow-capped peaks was sadly absent. But it’s a pretty sight even without the snow and Denver is a pretty place for a winter stroll in the sunshine.
One thing we’ve learned in our travels around USA is that most (maybe all?) State Capitol buildings are open to the public. They are historic buildings (well… as historic as buildings get in North America 😉) and a tour can be both interesting and free. We have done Capitol tours in a few in other states and Denver Colorado’s compares very favourably, we’d say!
The unseasonal warmth had been a real pleasure for our time in Wyoming and Colorado, but the weather-geeks were forecasting the imminent arrival of winter. A cold-front was rapidly scooting in-bound from the Pacific. We realised our time was up in the Rockies and we should push-on south pronto to continue our Operation Seeking Sunshine.
Rock Houses
On our way out of Colorado we stopped at the fascinating Mesa Verde National Park. Here is not only beautiful scenery, but the cliff-sides of the mesas (‘table’ mountains) are full of the most amazing ancient dwellings carved into the rock faces. Over 700 years ago, large communities of Pueblo people inhabited the dwellings in the cliffs. A visit to learn about both the ancient history and the culture that continues in the descendant communities today is absolutely worthwhile if you’re passing through.
Four Corners and a Canyon
Just down the road from Mesa Verde we reach a junction… the only point in the USA where four States meet at a single point: Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It’s a curious little spot controlled by the First Nation communities of the area. Whether it’s worth the $5 fee to enter to see a cross on the ground is a moot point. Certainly, if it were busy peak season we’d have skipped the circus. But as there was only one other person there we sucked-it up, took a quick piccy and moved swiftly on. Of the four states there to choose from, Arizona was the ‘no-brainer’ choice to achieve our sunshine mission.
Arizona has one monster-sized, enormous, extremely famous canyon to visit, but we’ve been-there-done-that-got-the-tshirt-eaten-the-stew (as they say). So we’re not heading to the Grand Canyon again. This time we’re heading to Arizona’s much lesser-known Canyon de Chelly. Okay… obviously it’s not as big as its more famous neighbour, but we think it’s equally beautiful and just as worthwhile to visit. Remember that cold-front of weather that we mentioned was in-bound to Colorado? Well, it was in-bound to the northern high-ground of Arizona too. This gave us spectacular views of a snow-sprinkled upper canyon rim, whilst the floor of Canyon de Chelly was untouched. All very fabulous ‘n all that, but remember… we’re on a mission. Time to push on further south to the sunshine!
Borderline
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the furthest south we can go in Arizona is to the Mexico border. The town of Yuma sits right on that border. From there it would be easy to just pop over into the land of tacos and keep heading south, but we decide not.
First, we spent a year in Mexico on our way north, but we only did six months in the USA. There are still things we want to see in Arizona and California. Also, with the dratted Omi-god variant whizzing around right now, countries seem to be randomly locking down at a moment’s notice. We’d be a bit pi**d-off if we popped into Mexico, then suddenly found we couldn’t get back into the USA (again!).
So the up-shot is… we hang around in the Yuma desert for a while. It’s lovely down by the Colorado River and we certainly accomplish our sunshine mission 😎.
Overlanding Friends
December has been a particularly brilliant month for us getting together with old (okay… less of the ‘old’ 😉) overlanding friends. First, back in Colorado we met up with British overlanding biker Anthony and his lovely partner Melanie. We met Anthony several times back in South America and it was great to catch up for a couple of days to reminisce over our time together in 2016/17 in Peru, at the Dakar Rally in Bolivia, then again in Paraguay and in Brazil.
Next in Arizona at Alamo Lake, we met up with the legendary US overlanders Mike and Geneva Saint-Armour who we last saw back in Costa Rica. We loved spending a few days with them (also meeting Geneva’s lovely sister and brother-in-law, Jessica and Richard) and catching up on their covid-lockdown time in Brazil.
We also had another wonderful meet-up at Christmas. Drumroll… standby for a great overlanding coincidence story… Way back in Argentina we met Swiss overlanders Werner and Rosemarie Hartmann (in their Iveco Daily 4×4 Cuthbert sibling truck, ‘Fidibus’) and spent Christmas 2015 together. Almost exactly two years later at the end of 2017 we happened to meet them again in Colombia. Cool huh? But whaddya know… in December 2021 we both just happened to be in Arizona, so we’re lucky enough to spend Christmas with them again four years after our last meeting. If we made this stuff up you wouldn’t believe it, would you?
Sign-off 2021
So has 2021 been better or worse than 2020 for overlanding? Well… clearly the world still isn’t in a great place. But at least we could get moving again this year. Some days we feel a bit restricted by our inability to continue easily around the world in our pre-virus mode. But we never forget how lucky we’ve been compared to other overlanders during the pandemic.
Many overlanders were forced to abandon their vehicle-homes in parts of the world where they were less than confident of the security. Some are only now – after almost two years away – just starting to face the difficulties of developing-world bureaucracy to recover their trucks. We count our blessings that we are fortunate enough to be ‘stuck’ in a part of the world that has allowed us to stay with Cuthbert and to now roam again. We are both healthy, vaxxed/boosted, and lucky to have the freedom to stay away from crowds and likely sources of infection.
In the last few days of 2021, we have just crossed from Arizona into southern California. It’s kind of treading old ground for us as we were here exactly two years ago on our way northbound through USA, but there is always more to see in a country as amazing as this one.
And what for 2022? Well frankly… dunno! Your guess is as good as ours! We were never great at planning ahead and the pandemic has made planning even more tricky. It’s almost three years since we’ve been back to UK, so we’d like to do a brief visit to see our family soon. And we’d like to ship Cuthbert somewhere across the Pacific (if we can find a country that will have us 😉) to continue our journey around the world. But we’ve learned that even if we set our expectations low, we can still fail to achieve them, so we just take each day as it comes. Watch this space in 2022 to see where we end up!
Happy New Year to everyone, and we hope you all end-up wherever you want to be in 2022!
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