The car’s windows were iced over, not just a little, but a good thick coating of ice had to be scraped off of them. We are in the San Juan Mountains, and finally, we are seeing heartfelt emotions from our travel guest. Arturo lights up with enthusiasm feeling like he’s discovering a place he could call home.

Do wild waters also turn the colors of fall?

This mountain range never fails to impress us and begs the question, “Why couldn’t your parents have left you a huge inheritance so you could live here not worrying about making money?” The simple answer would be that most of them are still alive.

The changing of the seasons is certainly appreciated. I don’t know how many times I’ve lamented in my writing how Arizona has two seasons: hot and not so hot, while everything else remains the same.

I can’t tell you which stream Caroline is standing in. We never noted it, nor did I note which roads we were traveling so this is a mystery river for now.

Good thing we take these selfies in front of all these signs, or we never know where we’ve been.

The drive up to the cliff dwellings high in the mountains at Mesa Verde National Park is a spectacular one.

Also spectacular is Cliff Palace. These ancestral Puebloan dwellings are well preserved and worth every effort to get out into another remote corner of America.

Some may marvel at the pyramids of Egypt, but I think these are just as worthy of our admiration. I’d imagine that some of these kivas had to be dug out of rock and that with primitive non-metal tools, it wasn’t the easiest of tasks, yet they persevered so they could bring order to their lives and evolve their cultures.

Out of Mesa Verde, we aimed for the Navajo Nation; it’s almost impossible not to pass through it. In this case, we were looking to take a quick look into Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Turns out that there are Jeep tours down there. I put it on the list of things to do in the future.

This is Mummy Cave and is off-limits to visitors. We can only look from afar. Even down on the canyon floor, you are restricted from getting too close.

The one good photo I was able to take of Mr. Camera-shy Arturo. We had a lot more driving ahead of us today as we were going to be driving down to Tucson to drop the kid after we all stopped at La Parrilla Suiza for some dinner before trekking north again so Caroline and I could go home.