Green Table AKA Anasazi suburbs

The third, and very important wheel: Stella

Waking up at the crack-of-dune (ha..ha?) this morning, we packed our gear up and were prepared to leave the Dunes, when friendly ranger Klack came by in his big Suburban (running on corn, I'm sure) and with his fighter-pilot eyes, spotted Stella off-leash sitting in the sagebrush. He then informed us that our dog "crapping all over the campsite makes for a crappy campground and that makes him look bad." To give the guy a break he was very nice about it, so nice in fact that Stella left him a little present.
Our mission today was: leave Colorado, get to Utah, get close to Escalante. As we drove down the road, listening to the escapades of Lyra and her clan on the audiobook of "The Golden Compass," we meandered through state and national forests, winding along mountainsides and
in valleys

until we approached Mesa Verde.
Ahh yes, The Green Table. Springing for the 15 dollar ticket, we drove from the entrance...20 MILES, to the actual Mesa Verde. Along the entranceway, we passed by field after field of dead trees.

These, we were later informed, had burned as a result of lighting back a few years ago, yet they still looked as freshly dead as ever.
Arriving at the main hub, we hoofed it down to the Spruce tree house.

This house (as all those in Mesa Verde) was built into a cliff sometime in the early 1000s by the Anasazi people who are now politically correctly referred to as the Ancestors O' Puebloans. Some of these houses were only accessible by climbing down a cliff and into them I was informed. This I decided would make a most treacherous walk home from the local pipe circle or bar. It is due to the location, however, that these structures, some of which are over a thousand years old and are made essentially of mud and stone, have held up even better than the best Ryan or Toll Brothers homes--hard to believe I know, but true.
From there we did a short hike in the Mesa Verde wilderness in search of this "green table" which gives Mesa Verde its name.

In the end Kim and I decided that maybe the green table was more of an idea, or maybe some sort of green table philosophy, and we headed back to the car with the comforting thought that the "go green" idea of today found its roots with the Ancestors O' Puebloans.
On our way out, we stopped at an overlook area and saw (photo below) what we assumed could only be, the Siegfried & Roy tour bus. Hilarious.

Entering Utah, the landscape drastically changed. Tall mesas, glowing hues of red and orange and yellow began to dot the horizon.

As the sun dipped we realized we needed to stop soon, so I kicked it into high gear, and Kim navigated us under cover of darkness into the Glen Canyon National Recreation area where we pitched camp amidst huge bugs and bats along the might Colorado River and dreamed of our earthquake-free lives in California.