Introduction

So we've done it After years of dreaming, months of planning and weeks of packing we're now travelling full time. We're leaving Colorado, our home for almost 11 years, and heading out.

We've spent the last couple of months sorting, discarding, de-cluttering and packing. We've managed to squeeze almost everything we need for the next year or so into a couple of duffel bags each. What's left is now crammed into a couple of 10' x 10' storage units. The house is empty and up for sale (and hopefully under contract, again, by the time you're reading this).

The next couple of weeks will be spent travelling around the Four Corners area (for our non-American friends, the area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah touch) exploring various National Parks and National Monuments. After this we're heading back to the UK to become live-aboards, exploring England by canal for a year.

This weekend we've made our way down to Cortez, in the SW corner of Colorado. Highlight of the trip so far has to have been Chimney Rock National Monument.

[As an aside, National Parks are established by Congress and encompass large land or water areas, to protect and preserve them. A National Monument is established by the President and protects a nationally significant resource. National Monuments can be of areas of land (Craters of the Moon), of scientific interest (e.g. fossil beds, archaeological sites) or man-made (Mount Rushmore).]

The Chimney Rock Archaeological Site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. In 2012 it was given National Monument status by President Barack Obama. The site was used roughly 1,000 years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo People, who built more than 200 homes and ceremonial buildings on the ridgeline leading up Chinmey Rock and Companion Rock. Current thinking suggests that the site was chosen for astronomical reasons, every 18.6 years the moon appears to rise between the two towers as part of the lunar standstill (part of the lunar procession cycle).

We'll be in Cortez for a couple of days, visiting Mesa Verde National Park, before heading further south into New Mexico for the Aztec Ruins.