Nightlife

The view from a suspension bridge over Box Canon Falls (Anna Wolf) [enlarge photo] MAY 2007 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Bermuda: Third Time's a Charm? • Secret Hotels of the Greek Isles • The Family Travel Handbook • Eat Like a Local: Toronto • Web Smart: Google Earth • Road Trip: Colorado • 40 Best Vacations

Day 2: Rico to Durango
Hotel guests sip coffee and eat scrambled eggs and bacon around wooden tables in the brightly painted breakfast room. The food is excellent, even if Eamonn O'Hara, the hotel's manager and chef of its acclaimed Argentine Grill, doesn't handle breakfast. Eamonn, a native of Ireland, and his wife, Linda Hackleton, an English expat, lived in Los Angeles--Eamonn worked for nine years at the Hotel Bel-Air--before moving to Colorado. "We didn't want to raise our daughter in L.A.," Linda explains, referring to 17-year-old Jorden.

We regretfully leave without sampling Eamonn's cooking, but soon enough stumble on the Silver Bean, a 1969 Airstream trailer converted into a coffee shop. A white picket fence surrounds an Astroturf patio where people sip lattes next to plastic flamingos. Inside, postcards and snapshots from the travels of "Uncle Fred" and "Aunt Betty" line the walls; owner Gigi Schwartz invented Fred and Betty as a lark. Gigi and her friend Wendy Mimiaga have been working in the tight quarters since the shop opened in 1998. "We haven't killed each other yet," says Wendy, laughing.

We drive 20 miles in the wrong direction, but it turns out that we're just 18 miles from the Four Corners Monument, so we keep going until we reach the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. Sure, the marker is sort of arbitrary. We pay $3 admission and have fun in the hot desert air anyway. I snap photos of Lisa doing "the crab" on the four corners plaque, so that each limb is in a different state.

The narrow roads carved into the steep canyon walls of Mesa Verde National Park have particularly beautiful views: valleys dotted with juniper trees and sagebrush in between giant mesas. Around one turn, we spot wild horses.

The park's cliff dwellings are the real show. At Spruce Tree House, a 13th-century sandstone dwelling once home to the Ancestral Puebloan people, a ranger points out several kivas--underground rooms used for various ceremonies. We join a group tour of Cliff Palace, which has 150 rooms and 23 kivas. Our guide explains that an average Ancestral Puebloan man was 5'4", which helps us imagine how 125 people once lived here--and how residents managed doorways less than four feet tall and two feet wide. We climb a series of ladders to the top of Cliff Palace, passing three-inch wide grooves worn into the sandstone by human fingertips. I'm grateful for the ladders.

In Durango, we check in to the Rochester Hotel, a red-brick Victorian building dating to 1892. A lounge area offers homemade oatmeal-raisin and chocolate chip cookies and a jug of iced tea--all with a help-yourself policy for guests. I'm thrilled with our room's little private patio, which opens into the side courtyard.

On our way to dinner, we stop at Rough Riders clothing store, just to browse the cowboy hats and boots and leather bracelets. But Citizens of Humanity jeans are marked down 50 percent, and we each walk out with a pair.

We bring our purchases around the corner to The Palace restaurant, where we're serenaded by a barbershop quartet over dinner. I can't manage to finish my mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich, and Lisa hardly makes a dent in her plate of penne--because the portions are so big and because we stuffed ourselves with cookies back at the hotel.

Waitresses at the Diamond Belle Saloon dress in 1800s period costumes, complete with peacock feathers in their hair, and more often than not there's someone playing ragtime on the piano. While we have drinks, I half expect brawling cowboys to fall from the balcony.