Good medicine?

Splishing and splashing

Four days with a sick Louis and we decided it was time for kill or cure. After skipping Durango, the next stop on the road was Pagosa Springs, a ski town famed for its hot, you guessed it, springs. I'd always been curious about the alleged healing properties of thermal waters and with all three of us now ailing I figured there'd never be a better time to put them to the test. 

At $20 bucks a person, a soak in the thermal pools wouldn't come cheap but if it saved us from an American doctor's bill then it would be worth it. We weren't sure how many of the pools would pass the elbow-in-the-bath test, but apparently if we chose ones less than 101F (whatever that means in celsius) then Louis would survive. So, ignoring the snow on the ground, we stripped down to our swimmers and plunged in. 

All that practice splashing in our DC swimming pool paid off: Louis loved it, despite the rotten egg stench. Come to think of it, given some of his diapers he's probably quite used to the smell of rotten eggs. And the best bit about it? After splashing happily for half an hour, we persuaded him to conk out poolside in his stroller for a snooze while we had a nice quiet soak. 

Good medicine? It was too early to tell but at the very least we set off slightly rejuvenated on the road for New Mexico. 

The new we

Perfect for two

Our anticipated hotel

We'd been looking forward to reaching Durango, Colorado ever since leaving Vegas. Vaunted as the "darling of the region" by our guidebook, the old mining town had promised much. From its status as a foodie magnet to its alter-ego as the state's unofficial microbrewery capital, Durango seemed like our sort of town. 

There it sat, surrounded by snowy mountains offering cheap skiing come winter and mountain biking come summer. Architecturally, it was picture-postcard perfect, its Victorian-era buildings all lovingly restored. Its Main Street was like a scene from an old Hollywood movie. Even its shopping came recommended. To cap it all, the cinema had a 6pm showing of Slumdog Millionaire, which we'd failed twice to see in DC. What could make for a more perfect holiday pitstop?

As it turned out, I'm not sure which "we", we thought were visiting Durango. Certainly not the Mom and Dad and nearly nine-month-old baby that pulled into town last Sunday afternoon. The reality of our new situation slowly sunk in as we meandered around. Bar hopping after a fancy dinner just wasn't going to happen; nor was that 6pm flick. As for skiing: fuggedaboutit. For starters, had I really thought through how on earth I'd cope looking after Louis if I had a bad fall? And did I even have the energy to bomb down the slopes in the first place? "No" and "no", clearly. 

In the end, despite initially planning to stay a couple of nights we stayed around just long enough to sample an ice cream, DJ to buy yet another country album and for me to burn some cash in a baby shop (of course). Somehow hotfooting it straight out of town, even a town we'd loved at first sight, was just less painful than hanging around and feeling like we were missing out on all its joys. 

Plus, that's the beauty - and tyranny - of the roadtrip. You don't feel like staying someplace, you don't have to. (Even if in retrospect it would have been a better plan to stay put. But that's another story.)  

Cowboy Country

Mesa Verde National Park

The cowboy hat shop, with one-horse Mancos reflected in its window

Back on melting form?

After leaving the desert we pulled into the ultimate one-horse town. Or at least its modern-day equivalent. Mancos, Colorado. Mancos' claim to fame is as the "gateway to Mesa Verde", a fabulous national park that hides amazing ancient Puebloan dwellings deep in its heart - we had to switchback around 20 miles of hairpin bends to find them.

But what made Mancos for me was that at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon, I managed to stumble into the frontier equivalent of Marylebone High Street. Okay, so I'm referring to but one shop - Beehive. But what a shop! I'm telling you - Beehive could hold its own not only in Marylebone but in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. I know, because it stocked the same brand of high scale, organic baby care - erbaviva - that I found in a shop there. (And which my friend sent me for Louis for Christmas.) Imagine the buzz I got after four or so days in the American wilderness! Amazingly it was one of only three shops in the entire town.

Chic shop (note the lack of plural) aside, the town of Mancos - if it merits that tag with a population of barely 1,000 - is the gateway to Cowboy Country. I know that because cowboy memorabilia were sprinkled everywhere. One of its other two shops was even a cowboy hat maker. I'm not talking the pale faces of Injunland, but the ranchers who followed the miners West to ensure they had something to eat. (This is America, after all.)

Arguably, even Beehive wasn't the best thing about this lovely, crunchy Colorado town. (That's "crunchy" in a granola munching, organic loving kind of a way.) That accolade would have to fall to the wonderful Absolute Bakery, a natural cafe that is a natural magnet for all Mancosians come breakfast time. And the town's entire tourist trade, i.e. us. For a brief moment it seemed that Louis might be back on top melting form after his Indian illness - check out him melting a fellow diner above. But his cheery mood was to prove but a mere respite. 

Another top point about Mancos was its history. You might think I'm joking, given the town was founded in 1894, but actually what I love about American history is its very newness. Medieval England and its endless King Henrys were all very well, but it can be tough to empathise with events that happened so long ago. America, on the other hand, especially gems like Mancos, is far more fathomable. Just think: the entire town is newer than our house back home. I wish someone would do the same restoration job on 55 Reverdy Road that they have done on Mancos' now visitor centre. 

On the road.....again

The classic shot

LJ in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico: simultaneously 

Four Corners Monument

You might think we could have gone anywhere we liked with our fortnight's holiday at the end of our big US adventure, but you'd have been quite wrong. He hasn't admitted it, but I'm convinced DJ planned our trip to take in the maximum number of states in 14 days driving without Louis or me getting on the next flight back to DC. To recap: we're driving from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, passing through Arizona, Utah and Colorado en route. That's five. Doubling Louis' entire state count. (Too bad DC is just a district.) 

So far, so exciting. Hard to top you might think. But you'd be wrong. As we cruised out of the bonus nation we clocked up, we swung past the most thrilling place in the entire US for map nuts. I'm talking the Four Corners: the only place in the entire United States (and remember, it's a big country and there are 50 of them) where four, yes, I said four, states meet at a single point. Luckily for the Navajo, it falls within their reservation, so they get to call it a "Monument" and charge 3 bucks ahead for the privilege of taking the obligatory snapshot. As you can see, we fell for it. Only Louis (despite his illness) managed the tourist trick of managing to get a limb in each state for the photo though. 

After that, it was bye-bye desert and hello mountains - literally within the space of about half an hour. This really is an incredible driving holiday. And that from someone who hates being in the car.  

Frontier post

Paleface and chief

In visiting Monument Valley, Louis may have clocked up another state, but to be honest, staying a night in Navajo Nation, as the vast reservation belonging to America's second-most populous Amerindian tribe is known, felt like visiting another country. It wasn't quite the same as "visiting Canada" as the park ranger in the Grand Canyon had promised - no visa stamp for Louis's little passport for one thing - but staying there sure felt different from the rest of the US. 

That much was hammered home when Louis got sick in the middle of the night and we were seemingly miles from civilisation. (Sorry Navajos, but this is a new Mom speaking.) Okay, so apparently there was a doctors' clinic 20-something miles away in Kayenta, the nearest town, but the fact that "Kayenta" means "boghole" in Navajo might give you a clue as to how little I fancied checking it out. I know it wasn't exactly a safari in Africa, but as new parents I really thought we might have been pushing our luck in staying smack bang in the middle of the desert as I could feel Louis' temperature soaring. 

It was also strange being in America, which everyone feels they know so well, yet being somewhere where people respect entirely different customs. Like the not drinking (in theory at least: check out artist Fritz Scholder's controversial paintings of drunk Indians for a different perspective) and like the no photo rule. Luckily for the Navajo's tourist industry - and for DJ's click-happy finger - their no-photo rule doesn't stretch to the landscape as does that of the Hopi tribe. Even so, we stuck to snapping our little paleface with a statue of a chieftain in our hotel lobby rather than seek out the real thing. (Existential question for today's traveller: if you see something while on holiday but can't immortalise it on film then were you really there? And was there any point in going?)

Mostly, though, driving through the vast nothingness of that Navajo desert felt like stepping back in time. Okay, so we were hardly trundling along in our horse-drawn wagons, but just glimpsing that landscape helped give you a real sense of what frontier country must have felt like to the pioneers of yesteryear. I speak as someone whose interest in history was sparked by a project I did aged seven or eight with Mr Nevin (brother to erstwhile famous footballer, Pat Nevin) about the American West. We all had to take on the persona of a 19th century pioneer: I can still picture the back wall of our classroom, which was turned into a map of the USA onto which was pinned little cut out people and their wagons. I know burning across the landscape in a petrol-guzzling SUV is hardly the same thing but, hey, some poetic license, please.