How Can You be in Four Places At Once, When You're Not Anywhere at All?

Well, maybe by being at 4 Corners? (I dunno, ask the folks over at the Firesign Theater....)


This is the spot where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado all meet. We headed up that way this weekend for a weekend getaway. We used Farmington as a base and made some day trips to various spots.

On the way up on Friday, we stopped off at Angel Peak Recreation Area to find a letterbox by wronghat. I'd never been to this place (actually, never even heard of it) and it turned out to be a great surprise. A few miles off the highway to Farmington were tremendous views of badlands.


A great way to start the day.


Then we headed up to the town of Aztec to go to the Aztec Ruins National Monument (and to get another letterbox). The ruins were really fun - there was a place where you got to go through a whole series of rooms that had been reconstructed and restored - it was really interesting. There was also a reconstructed Great Kiva. We were amazed at how it looked inside and how spacious it was.


The next day, we went to the actual 4 Corners site. I hadn't been there since I was about 5. It has really gotten fixed up! It wasn't at all what we had expected. We were expecting boring, flat terrain and it was nothing of the sort. After we left the actual monument, which is on Navajo tribal land, we drove to find a Kristal and Ron 4 Corners LB nearby. It had a nice view of the San Juan River so we stopped and had a picnic lunch.


The next day was our big adventure. I had read about Aspen's Crow Canyon letterbox about a year ago and had been wanting to go. It was at a petroglyph site about 20 miles down a sketchy dirt road and I had been nervous about going out there with my friends Peggy and Lynda when we all went to Farmington this spring. So this trip was mainly about coming back here to check out the petroglyphs (I'm a big petroglyph fan). Well, it was well worth the trip back. The road wasn't bad at all (except a sandy bit at the end) - the cottonwoods were changing and the drive up along Largo Wash was lovely.


We made it to the site and had no trouble finding the letterbox. We continued on along the trail to the "Main Panel" of petroglyphs. Excellent!





That was so much fun that once we got back in the car, I wanted to go find the other places mentioned on the sign when we came in: the 44 Panel and the Warrior Panel. We drove over to the 44 Panel and hiked over to see it. You can see why they call it the 44 Panel -




Somehow we missed the sign for the Warrior Panel so didn't see that one. We were excited about our day so far - it was a beautiful day and we had had Crow Canyon all to ourselves - so we decided to go on to D-Girl's Turtle of the Lake letterbox. It was at a remote Navajo ruin with the remains of a triangular tower. I really wanted to go. We had to go back the 20 miles on the dirt road, drive another 40 miles or so, then back to another dirt road. By the time we got to the trailhead, I was pretty tired of being in the car. It was only 0.1 miles to walk to the ruins and there was the triangular tower, perched on the edge of the canyon. Beautiful! And again, not a soul in sight. It was definitely worth the drive out to this remote spot, I think it was my favorite place of the whole trip.


We hung out here for awhile and had our picnic lunch of the day. Many many thanks to Aspen and D-Girl for bringing us to these 2 very special places.

We were tired, and we decided to skip another possible box at Navajo Dam and head back the way we came along the main road, where we could stop one more time for a letterbox in Blanco. But our GPS was telling us that the shortest way back to Blanco was not the way we had come, along the main road, but it was along a series of (more!!) dirt roads which led us through Navajo Dam! So we followed the advice of the GPS. It was a beautiful drive, we got to see more new scenery, and we got to drive across the dam!


We found the letterbox there and then headed to Blanco. Never found the box there but we didn't care, we were tired and had had a wonderful day of adventuring and letterboxing. Thanks again to everyone for taking us to such wonderful places on this trip!