Our tour will begin and end in Albuquerque NM and take a circular route through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Along the way, we visit some truly impressive national and tribal parks of the Southwest, including Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Ute Mountain, Monument Valley, Painted Desert, and Canyon de Chelly.


Itinerary

(B – Breakfast, L – Lunch, D – Dinner)


Day 1 
Albuquerque, NM / AztecRuinsNational Monument
On arrival in Albuquerque NM, we’ll be met by our Quest naturalist guide, Dave Milsom. We’ll then drive to the Famous Aztec Ruins National Monument where we will take a self-guided tour through these expertly restored ruins. We’ll marvel at the architectural skills of the ancient Puebloan peoples who built this complex around 1100 A.D. along the banks of Animas River. We’ll also visit the Great Kiva, an awesome semi-subterranean structure, over 40-feet in diameter, which was the central social and religious site of this ancient complex.  Now reconstructed, Aztec Ruins' Great Kiva is the oldest and largest building of its kind.

People have lived and farmed along the banks of the Animas River for centuries and the water provides a riparian habitat of huge cottonwood trees along its banks. We’ll stroll through these pleasant woods looking for Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Juniper Titmouse, Gambel's Quail and possibly Mule Deer and Black-tailed Jackrabbit.

In the evening, we’ll have a welcome dinner while we discuss the activities planned for our trip around the Four Corner states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah.
o/n Best Western Inn and Suites, Farmington, NM (D)

Day 2 
Chaco Canyon National Monument
We have an exciting day planned as we journey to the remote Chaco Canyon and arguably the most impressive ancient ruins in the Southwest. Chaco is located in the northwest quadrant of New Mexico, surrounded by Navajo and nearby Zuni and Hopi reservations.

Chaco Canyon was an important Anasazi (ancient Native American) cultural center from about 900 A.D. through 1130 A.D. About 30 ancient masonry buildings, containing hundreds of rooms each, attest to Chaco's importance. Some structures are thought to serve as astronomical observatories or calendars. Archaeologists discovered jewelry made from Mexican and Californian materials in ancient trash heaps. Large well-constructed roadways thought to be built for pilgrims, subjects, or traders, lead from sites 50 miles away to the center of Chaco Canyon. In a very real sense, all roads lead to Chaco.

Chaco is an environmentally harsh place: hot and dry in the summer, cold and dry in the winter--nearly a desert. Though there is substantial evidence that the Anasazi farmed here, they had to use many dry farming techniques to support themselves. In fact, some archaeologists question whether Chaco Canyon supported itself, or whether outside farming sites sent supplemental food.

The park was originally established to preserve the unique archeological treasures but has become a small oasis of bio-diversity, protected from farming and grazing and mineral extraction. We hope to see a small herd of Elk that calls this park home, as well as Greater Roadrunner and Pinyon Jay. We plan to spend all day in the park.
o/n Best Western Inn and Suites, Farmington, NM (B, L, D)

Day 3
Ute Mountain Tribal Park
Today we’ll have an early start as we take a special guided tour of Ute Mountain Tribal Park with a local Ute guide. Part of the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation, the Ute Mountain Tribal Park has been set aside to preserve remnants of the Ancestral Puebloan and Ute cultures. It has been selected by National Geographic Traveler as one of "80 World Destinations for Travel in the 21st Century", one of only 9 places in the United States to receive this special designation.

We’ll need to have our cameras ready as the views are magnificent, as usual, with Looming Ute Mountain dominating the landscape. The park, in a completely different setting from Mesa Verde, contains hundreds of surface sites and cliff dwellings along a 40km stretch of the Mancos River, as well as ancestral Puebloan petroglyphs, and Ute wall paintings and petroglyphs.  It is a truly wonderful experience to have the ancient art and structures interpreted by guides whose families have lived in these mountains for centuries.

In the afternoon, we will take a leisurely drive to Mesa Verde, our lodgings for the next two nights. The winding drive up the side of the mountain has spectacular views and we’ll make lots of stops so we can enjoy the view. Far View Lodge is a very comfortable hotel in magnificent surroundings and we’ll want to stay up late to experience the grandeur of the night sky in the clear mountain air. There will an opportunity to take an optional nature hike before dinner or just wander off to enjoy the peace of this glorious setting.
o/n Far View Lodge, Mesa Verde  (B, L, D)
 
Day 4 
Mesa Verde National Park
After a hearty breakfast and optional early morning nature walk, not to mention photography in the soft light that comes with dawn in this special place, we’ll spend the rest of the day exploring the vast Mesa Verde National Park.  This park was established in 1906 to preserve sites built by "Pre-Columbian Indians" on mesa tops and in canyon alcoves. Mesa Verde is Spanish for "green table" and the mesa rises high above the surrounding country. The Ancestral Puebloans occupied this area within the park for 750 years and, from the hundreds of dwellings that remain, archeologists have compiled one of the most significant chapters in the story of prehistoric America.

There are over 4,000 known archeological sites in Mesa Verde National Park, 600 of which are cliff dwellings. Although only a few of these sites have been excavated, many different types are accessible to visitors including pithouses built during the 500’s AD to the spectacular cliff dwellings of the 1200’s AD.
As we are visiting in the off-season, we’ll be spared the crowds of summer. The vast sandstone-coloured rock recesses hide and shelter many famous structures such as the Cliff Palace, where the complexity of the ruins are quite amazing.

In addition to these fabled ancient structures, we will go to scenic overlooks to view Golden Eagles soaring across Montezuma Valley, and to the meadows as Broad-billed Hummingbirds sample wildflowers for nectar and insects.  Tonight we’ll have another chance to view the spectacular display of the heavens, weather permitting.
o/n Far View Lodge, Mesa Verde (B, L, D)

Day 5 
Four Corners / Hovenweep NM / Goosenecks State Park
Today will be our chance to have the unusual experience of having our hands and feet touching four states, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, at the same time.

After our “four state straddle”, we’ll drive on to Hovenweep National Monument where   human habitation dates back over 10,000 years when nomadic Paleo-Indians visited the Cajon Mesa to gather food and hunt game. Hovenweep is noted for its solitude and undeveloped, natural character.  The remains of nearly thirty kivas (Puebloan ceremonial structures) have been discovered on the slopes of Little Ruin Canyon, and a variety of other structures are perched on the canyon rims, balanced on boulders and tucked under ledges. We’ll walk a mountain trail among Pinyon Pines and ancient Junipers looking for Yellow-rumped Warbler and Common Raven soaring over the canyon.

We will then make our way to Goosenecks State Park where an incredible series of tight switchbacks of the San Juan River gives the area its name. We will look into a 1,000-foot-deep chasm, carved through the Pennsylvanian Hermosa Formation, as the San Juan River meanders back and forth, flowing for more than five miles while progressing only one linear mile toward the Colorado River and Lake Powell. It’s a most impressive sight.

We will then make our way to fabled Monument Valley and our lodgings for the night.
o/n Gouldings Lodge, Monument Valley, Utah (B, L, D)

Day 6
Monument Valley
MonumentValley provides perhaps the most enduring and definitive images of the American West. The isolated red mesas and buttes surrounded by empty, sandy desert have been filmed and photographed countless times over the years for movies, ads and holiday brochures. Because of this, the area may seem quite familiar, even on a first visit, but it is soon evident that the natural colours really are as bright and deep as those in all the pictures. The valley is not a valley in the conventional sense, but rather a wide flat, sometimes desolate landscape, interrupted by the crumbling formations rising hundreds of feet into the air, the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region.

To enhance our enjoyment, we will be having a jeep tour of this area with a Navajo guide born and raised in Monument Valley.  Who else knows more "inside information" about beautiful Monument Valley than someone who calls it his motherland?  Although there are very few trees in the area because of the extreme dryness and lack of moisture, an occasional juniper will appear near the edges of the valley. When moisture is available, we’ll also be able to see Cliffrose, Rabbitbrush and Snakewood growing.
o/n Gouldings Lodge, Monument Valley, Utah (B, L, D)
 
Day 7
Navajo Land / Grand Canyon
Today after our optional early morning nature walk or dawn photography session to capture the beautiful, early light patterns on the rocks, we’ll travel on through Navajo country, through some of the most spectacular scenery on our trip to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Nothing in the way of superlatives quite accurately describes this incredible natural phenomenon. So we'll let you form your own opinions. In the meantime we’ll look for the newly released California Condors that are doing well in the canyon area. We’ll also keep an eye out for Coyote, Mule Deer and Abert’s Squirrel, among the Ponderosa Pines along the Canyon Rim, while Red-tailed Hawks soar on the thermals overhead.
o/n  Red Feather Lodge,  Grand Canyon Village, Arizona ( B, L, D)
                       
Day 8
Grand Canyon / Meteor Crater
Today we’ll return to the rim to view the Canyon in morning light with plenty of time to view and photograph this World Heritage Site.  In the afternoon we’ll make our way to Holbrook, via Flagstaff and Meteor Crater. The landscape gradually changes from gentle rolling pastureland, with scattered pines and bushes, back to the desert as we leave Flagstaff. Some 50,000 years ago, a meteor struck the earth in this bleak and desolate area and gouged out a hole some 185m deep and 1300m in diameter. The resulting blast fused rocks and minerals together into patterns that resemble lunar craters. We’ll visit this largely preserved intact impact crater to witness the forces of nature that created our planet.
o/n Holbrook Holiday Inn Express, Holbrook, AZ ( B, L, D)

Day 9
Painted Desert / Petrified Forest / Canyon de Chelly National Monument
Today we’ll travel through the Painted Desert. As its name suggests the area is a tumble of badlands, in the northern section of Arizona, consisting of layers of minerals and decayed organic matter. These bands of yellow, reds, blues and gold create an artist’s palette among the buttes, mesas and dunes of the desert.

We’ll also stop at the Petrified Forest, and follow the trail of majestic petrified redwood giants dating back to the Jurassic Period. The petrified logs are extremely beautiful with most unexpectedly bright colours that are especially striking in low light and at sunset.

The Petrified Forest was set aside as a national Monument in 1906 to preserve the area of the forest. There is also evidence of early human presence in the park in the form of interesting petroglyphs. The grassland eco-system here is one of the largest in the southwest and has many varied and interesting cacti and other plants.  The park is also home to many creatures including Pronghorn, Mule Deer, Coyote and Gray Fox. The grasslands are a good hunting area for raptors and it is possible to see Swainson’s Hawk, and perhaps a Prairie Falcon, soaring above the mesas.
o/n Thunderbird Lodge, Canyon de Chelley National Monument( B, L, D)

Day 10
Canyon de Chelley National Monument
Canyon de Chelley and area is one of the longest continuously inhabited areas of North America. The canyon floor remains green and fertile all year round. This, together with the protection offered by the rocky walls and the beauty of the landscape explain why the valley has been inhabited for so long - from primitive peoples 2000 years ago, through to the Anasazi civilization. In the twelfth century, the Anasazi, which occupied a large area of the Southwest, suddenly disappeared.  The Navajo, who have lived here for the last 300 years, still rear sheep and goats in the canyon, and plant crops.

Since the Canyon and its ancient buildings and cliff dwellings are of great spiritual significance to the Navajo, we have booked a jeep ride, along with a Navajo guide, who will introduce us to his ancient tribal lands.
o/n Thunderbird Lodge, Canyon de Chelley National Monument ( B, L, D)

Day 11 
Drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico
We will have a leisurely drive back to Albuquerque today.  The activities and stops that take place will depend on what the group in interested in doing, as there are several options available. 
o/n Best Western Airport Inn, Albuquerque (B, L, D)

Day 12 
Flight Home
After a leisurely breakfast, Dave will take us to the airport in time for our flight home. (B)