.:Mesa Verde:.

After my short but very fun trip to Utah I packed up and headed south. Whitney and Maynor are going to come back to Texas for a few months, so Tyler, Bregelle and I opted to award ourselves "Siblings of the Year" and drove one of their cars back for them. And since Mesa Verde happens to be on the way, we decided to stop and say hello. I was pretty excited to hang out with Tyler and Bregelle while we helped Whitney and Maynor get their other vehicle home. Whit dropped the car off in Salt Lake on Friday, and then they took off on their own trip. We left Sunday. You know how when you're a kid you see cool stuff on the side of the road and want to stop, but your parents don't let you? We were driving by Wilson's arch when Tyler realized, "Hey! We can stop if we want to!" So we stopped and hiked up the arch.

So we got to Mesa Verde and decided to hike to the Indian graffitti on the wall. The sign said it was only a 2.8 mile hike and we thought we could do it in an hour. We could have-if it hadn't been through a small up and down crazy canyon. We had to hurry to get to our tour on the way back. ... if you look closely you can see Tyler and Bregelle waving across the canyon.

"NO FOOD OR DRINK!" ... the next sign says,

"No Pets. No Smoking. BRING DRINKING WATER!"

WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO!?

The sun was really bright. As if you can't tell.

Whitney and Maynor thought it'd be fun to stop in Colorado as well. We were wandering through the parking lot when I noticed a Subaru similar to the one we were driving. "Is it a requirement for people who drive those cars to cover them with hippy bumper stickers!?" Upon further examination we discovered that it was actually Whitney and Maynor's other car. So we all hung out for a while.

When Jeff and I were in Europe we could hardly believe just how old everything was there. Everything was hundreds of years old. Everything. Even the buses. ... Well, maybe they just smelled like it. But anyway it made us realized what a baby country America is. Which is another reason I think Europe hates us-they're jealous. In just three hundred years we've become ten times the country they are. I'd hate us too if I didn't live here. Anyway, different rant for a different day. These ruins are roughly two thousand years old. Roughlyish. How's that for old! Eat your heart out, Europe!

Lots of stairs. Lots.

Random grass at sunset that I thought was purdy.

We were a little worried about the car since it was pulling a wonderful little trailer... so Tyler and Bregelle added some transmission fluid. I would have helped, but someone had to take pictures.