Journey to the Windy City - Week 1 Review

Since you may have expected my journals to post at more regular intervals [daily] you may or may not have known that I was extremely ill the day we were to leave Las Vegas. As a lover of fruits and vegetables, I should have known better, but I enjoyed way too many tomatoes during a time when they were still restricted in all states other than CA. Within two hours of my vegetarian meal, I was extremely ill, which continued for another 5-7 days. After one and half days of sleep, I was able to move to the car where Kyle managed our travels and needs while I recovered [quite painfully at times] in the car, throughout three states and at many a remote stops in the middle of nowhere. The fine establishment responsible for serving toxic food will be receiving a very serious letter this week.

In a nutshell, once we left Las Vegas, we had to improvise much of our trip stopping in several towns and taking stays unexpectedly wherever was needed due to health reasons. Our first stop after Las Vegas was Utah to drive through Zion National Park. To say the least, it was sad to have to see everything from the windows since this is such a magnificent and wondrous park. With canyon walls towering one-half mile deep, this park's beauty draws from the many layers of rock and colorful sediment enveloping the wide valleys cut by the Virgin River over millions of years. In my opinion, the park's most exhilirating hike can be found in the Narrows where hikers pass the end of the dirt trail and begin to traverse the Virgin River as it becomes smaller between the canyon walls. Without having eaten in days, this hike was not an option, but I wish we could have attempted this since the weather was dry and safe [no imminent rain, flash floods].

Our next stop was Page, AZ, which is well known for it's access to Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam, which helped put this town on the map. There is not much else to this town or our stay there because I continued to fight the toxins in my system and was very ill. While in this area, our hopes had been to tour the dam and also make a trip for one or two days to the Grand Canyon to visit the northern rim, but again, that proved to be impossible with my state of health. I could barely hold down water and while the temperature still topped 115 degrees, delaying our time in an arid region would be foolishly unhealthy.

Our next drive was to head toward Colorado, but we had to cross through most of Arizona before we would cross into the Rocky Mountain state. This part of our drive seemed to last the longest due to the illness' continued symptoms. What should have been a half day drive over 250 miles felt more like another two days delay in Las Vegas given then number of required stops on the side of the road each 15 minutes. At long last, we reached Cortez, CO, which is very close to Mesa Verde National Park, known for it's lush plateaus and deep valleys, filled with over 600 cliff dwellings of the Anasazi people.

With my recovery beginning to turn a corner, we took a driving tour of Mesa Verde National Park and visited one cliff dwelling called the Cliff Palace, which was an amazing feat in consideration of their primitive tools and lack of accessibility to their sanctuary [they climbed nearly 80 feet in the air to reach food and water outside of their cliffs]. We began a long loop drive of the southwestern towns of Colorado for the remainder of the day since I could not do much yet, still not having had anything to eat or much to drink for days. We drove through the beautiful ski resort towns of Telluride, Ridgway and Ouray [::pronounced "You're Ray"::] and over the "Million Dollar Highway" [moniker given for a variety of possible reasons - 1) The rich soil due to the gold, silver and iron mining within the last one hundred years; 2) The beautiful views offered at each and every point during this Alpine wonderland; or 3) The most likely reason being that you could not pay a passerthrough a million dollars to drive that route again given the lack of guard rails and extremely high drop-off points!]. This route brings you to the small and adventurous town of Durango, which is just about 60 miles east of Mesa Verde NP and Cortez, where we stayed over. We grabbed a bite to eat for Kyle and then headed back on the road to get some rest.

Our next day was a tough one because I fell sick again to similar symptoms and we were ultimately delayed and unable to complete most of the activities we had planned for the day. Since I was still working on drinking some gatorade, not much else could happen so we planned to go up to the cooler and more comfortable towns in the mountains for me to recover before we made any more formidable plans for our trip. We made the best of our day by returning to Telluride and enjoying one of the free gondola rides through the pristine, alpine mountains and over into the village of Telluride. Since so many celebrities like Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Oprah Winfrey and Sylvester Stallone call this home, we were not surprised to hear that Kelly Ripa was in town according to some fellow visitors. For another evening of rest, we headed to Ouray and stayed over in this old mining town that now bubbles with visitors because of it's famous non-sulfuric hot springs and waterfalls.

On Monday, I had my first good day in over a week and was able to eat and drink a little bit! We took a walk around Ouray to see some of the most active waterfalls, which is easy since they encompass the town. On a whim, we booked a one-half day rafting tour of the Uncompahgre River. With a little bit of nutrition and hydration, I felt that I could give this a try and I am so glad that we went because the sunshine and fresh air really helped me get through this bout of sickness and onto the road to recovery! The river trip was lovely, the sun was perfectly warm and the river water felt great on our skin!