Durango, Weaving, and Cortez

The last three days have been pretty easy. On Tuesday we went to the Anasazi Heritage Center. On Wednesday, Renata's birthday, we went to Durango. Finally today we rested and went to some pottery and silver stores in Cortez.

The Anasazi Heritage Center is about 8 miles north of Cortez. It's operated by the Bureau of Land Management. As we expected it, featured numerous displays of pottery, food sources, and lifestyles of the ancient puebians. The neatest display was an interactive display in which we got to grind corn with a manos and a metate. and another in which we got to learn to weave! They both were fun!

For Renita's birthday we drove to Durango and visited the historic downtown. We saw a lot of neat and pricey stuff. The highlight of the trip was the lunch at an Italian restaurant. Renita got a huge serving of gelato. It was so good.

Today we stayed home and went to some shops in Cortez. One, called the Notah Dineh, had more stuff than any other place we have been. It had a huge collection of pawned jewelry, woven baskets selling for $6000, and had supplies for the artists. Lots of the stuff you see sold was from premade components sold to and then assembled by the Native Artists.

We went to several other stores, one had rugs woven in India. I didn't ask if they were the same as magic carpets,(When our daughter went to India I asked her to buy me a magic flying carpet. She didn't see any, but I think she was spending too much time seeing elephants and doing yoga....Go figure.).

The last store we stopped in was closing but we had a nice visit with the owners, who were tired of snow and want to head south,(Did I say we saw snowflakes today?).
All in all the time went to fast. Tomorrow we leave for Moab. Clear skies.