The Bar D Chuckwagon in Durango, Colorado.

 

Bar D Chuckwagon

8080 County Road 250

Durango, CO 81301

 

(970) 247-5753

 

 

                                               Website: http://www.bardchuckwagon.com

 

The easiest description I can give of Bar D Chuckwagon is FUN!!!  The atmosphere rustic and serene; the staff are so, so friendly; the cowboy food is hearty and filling; and the entertainment ranged anywhere to sentimental to fall on the floor funny.   The drive along Route 250 is beautiful; we saw two young Elk grazing, but unfortunately there is no real shoulder to pull off on to take photos.  To get to Route 250, make a turn onto 32nd Street in Durango (City Market side); follow to the 250 junction and turn to the left; keep on following the road till you see those welcoming gates to the Bar D; follow the paved road to the parking lot.

 

 

 

 

Once you park, head on over to the train station to purchase your tickets.  The price includes the meal and the show; the tickets have assigned table numbers, so the earlier you get there (it opens at 5:30pm), the closer to the stage you are).  There is a train ride for the children; also a wedding chapel for ceremonies.

As you continue walking around, you'll see the Record Shop where CDs and DVDs of the Bar D Wranglers can be purchased.  There are many more shops, and there is bound to be something that catches your eye; or your taste buds like at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Shop. 






The outside decor ranges from historic to simply fun.

The back area of the property contains the dining section with wooden, picnic style tables and benches; all with numbers that correspond with the tickets.  The kitchen area doubles as the stage once meals are done with.  The backdrop for the entire area is a beautiful forest and towering formations of stone.

 

 

 

Dinner begins at 7:30pm and Bar D is not chintzy with the food items; your cowboy plate is full.  For those with really large appetite, if there are extras available, they will be offered after everyone has gotten their firsts.  Lemonade, coffee and water are served in metal cups; remember this is a cowboy dinner and you're going rustic.  Choices in meat range from BBQ Beef, BBQ Chicken, Combo of both or Ribeye Steak; beans, baked potato, biscuit, applesauce and spiced cake are included too.  See, told you they were not cheap on the grub.

 

 

Bar D Wranglers
 

Matt Palmer and Richard Lee Cody
 

Gary Cook and Joel Racheff
 

Bar D Wranglers are the entertainment for the evening and they are, not just very talented, but absolutely wonderfully fun to listen to.  The Western songs vary from sentimental to hilarious; for instance, their updated version of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" to "Low Riders in the Sky".  At any moment I was expecting Gabriel Iglesias to walk on stage yelling, "Martin!!!" 

 

 



Cy Scarborough
 

One of the original founders and owners of the Bar D came out on stage to sing about opossums; Cy Scarborough started this Chuckwagon rolling along in 1969.  He helped to end the evening with a patriotic medley of the United States, and it was hard not to stand, put your hand over your heart and sing along.








If you're visiting Durango, whether spending a few days, overnight, or going home the same day; make sure to plan for an evening at Bar D Chuckwagon.  Get along little doggies.

Mary Cokenour

 

 

 





 

Arches National Park - The La Sal Viewpoint and the Beginning of Grand Vistas.

Now while you can walk the Park Avenue Trail, see the backside of Courthouse Towers and come out in the general area of the Towers, I prefer getting back in the car and doing the drive to the La Sal Mountains Viewpoint. Walking out onto the slickrock to the informational display, be careful of not tripping over your own feet; you'll be so busy looking at the view to care about footing. As you slowly begin to turn to see towards the direction of the Courthouse Towers, you'll notice a small formation in the desert.  It is not named on the display, but this sandstone covered in red mud resembles a castle; well that is what my imagination pictures it as.

 

 

Now for those of you who love Harrison Ford and the "Indiana Jones" movies, you should recognize this grand vista of the Courthouse Towers area; how it leads the eye down into a valley of giants.  In the opening of the third movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", a young Indy is attempting to elude the bad guys through a valley of reddish sandstone towers.  That's correct, it was filmed in Arches National Park in the Courthouse Towers area.

 

 

 

How about I introduce you to some of these silent and stoic stars of Arches?  To the left is Courthouse Towers and standing nearby are The Three Gossips; you know there always has to be someone whispering about the trials going on at the courthouse.

   Downwind from the Gossips is Sheep Rock.

 

 

Looking to the right side of the valley view, The Tower of Babel stands next to The Organ.  There is a parking area nearby; get out and walk around and you'll come to the realization that next to these ancient sandstone giants, you are a puny nothing.  They have existed for centuries, and will continue to exist for centuries more after you become as simple dust.









 

Now that you have been humbled, or maybe not; anyway, time to do a little traveling along the paved roadway.  You'll be passing by the Petrified Dunes and in the distance will see Balanced Rock and the rock lineage of The Garden of Eden and the Windows.   After visiting Balanced Rock, take the roadway around it and this will lead to the Garden, Windows and the Cove of Caves. If you continue straight on the road though, you'll find another secondary road leading to Delicate Arch. Choices, choices, and what you see and do all depends on how much time you want to devote to discovery.

 

 

 

Mary Cokenour 

Marie Ogden and her Home of Truth.

Gates to Marie's Place; the Inner Portal
 

After moving to Monticello in 2009, Roy and I took many a ride around the area we were now calling home.   Going along Route 211, three miles from the junction of Route 191, we came across, what we thought to be, an old western homestead. 

 

There are several wood frame buildings and a tall set of wooden pillars with a sign indicating that this was "Marie's Place".   Before you reach this part, on the opposite side of the road, are buildings on the range, obviously old and abandoned; also a rock foundation of what, at first, looks like Indian ruins.  Going back into town, we began asking around for information on this location.  Basically, anyone under the age of 50 had no idea of what we were referring to or where.  Residents over 50 were a different story altogether; the consensus was that this was a "cowboy town" complete with saloon and brothel that was abandoned once the Mormon population began to increase in number.  Not condoning alcohol and prostitution, the residents of this "town" were eventually driven out.

I went to the local library to see if there was any history of that "town" in writings or photos, but was told there were none.  Getting busy with settling in the home, going to work and taking care of our little family of four legged children; I forgot about "Marie's Place".  Now this is a whole new year of new adventures, this travel blog for one, and my quest for information on "Marie's Place" has resumed.  To the Internet I went and oh what a story I found; not too many sources of information, but pretty consistent in content.  This was no "cowboy town", but a "spiritual community", also known as a "cult"; The Home of Truth.



Born May 31, 1883, originally from Newark, New Jersey, Marie Ogden became highly interested in spiritualism and the metaphysical after the death of her husband in 1929.  Personally, I wonder how much of this was influenced by Houdini's (death 1926) history, since he spent so much of his life attempting to prove there was an afterlife, and contacting his deceased mother.  Marie formed the "School of Truth" in Idaho, but had a falling out with her mentor over differing political views; giving credence to the ideal that church and state should stay separated.  Learning that there was cheap land for sale in San Juan County, Utah; she and many of her followers snapped up parcels of land in Dry Valley (15 miles north of Monticello) in 1933.  Dirt cheap was no joke, since the land was so dry and infertile; no crops could be cultivated there and it is still the same way to this day.  Cattle roam this range land, lazing on the hard ground, or nibbling away at any weed brave enough to try and grow.

The group's membership reached about 100 people, believing that Marie's ears heard God's words, or more exactly, that he wrote his instructions and doctrines to her via her typewriter.  Made perfect sense since she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, or so she claimed.  She also claimed that the second coming of Christ would occur at Church Rock, and that the location of Home of Truth was to be God's Kingdom on Earth.  Marie was a shrewd woman as well; she handled all the community's financial business, purchased the San Juan Record, became its editor and wrote about her metaphysical ideals for all the county to read.  However, around 1937, her own members began to wonder about all the strange goings on, and probably Marie's sanity.  She kept a female member's dead body claiming that the woman would come to life again; she was arrested for not having a death certificate, but later released due to the body "disappearing".  Two stories on that, one is that the body was cremated after the local sheriff started to investigate; the other is that the mummified body is still buried on the property somewhere.  The members eventually left, Marie supported herself by teaching piano lessons and finally passed away in 1975 at the San Juan Nursing Home in Blanding, Utah.  Her personal items were sold at auction; many ended up being donated to the Frontier Museum which is located at the Monticello Welcome Center.










Enough about Marie Ogden and more about the makeup of all the buildings still standing on the property. By the way, the property is now privately owned and maintained; but no word if it will ever be opened up to the public as an attraction. Seems a waste to let this little piece of history of the Southwest, and San Juan County, just break up into dust and blow away.

Home of Truth was made up of three sections;  Outer Portal, Middle Portal and the Inner Portal.



The Outer Portal was made up of a dormitory for visitors and non-members of the group; also utility and storage buildings.

That rock foundation I thought were Indian ruins; that is actually the unfinished temple located in the Middle Portal.



Unfinished Temple; the Middle Portal

The Inner Portal inside the gated and fenced area was the location of member dormitories, root cellar, meeting place, outhouses and Marie's home.  During the 1970s, while Marie was in the nursing home, the property was left abandoned and used as shelter by anyone passing through.  It was burnt to the ground by some of these trespassers, but it was said that her home was more lavish with a porch, several bedrooms and an underground two car garage.

 Well there you have it, the little that is known about Marie Ogden and her "Home of Truth".  In San Juan County, there is such a huge effort made to preserve, conserve and draw attention to Native American cultures and the Mormon pioneers.  The "Home of Truth" community is also a piece of the County's history, of the settling of this area of the Southwest, and should receive just as much effort.

Mary Cokenour

Update:  July 2015

The 16' x 24' cave that can be seen inside Church Rock was contracted out by landowner, Claud Young.  It was dynamited out in the 1940s, so the rancher could store feed and salt licks for his cattle.  Claud Young was owner of this property during the time that Marie Ogden and her group resided in Dry Valley.  While some like to believe in the theory that Home of Truth members chiseled out the cave by hand to begin creating a church inside; this believe is based on hearsay, not facts.

There is another story about the Mormon pioneers creating the cave, but this happens to be another legend, and that is all; no truth to it.

Looping the Abajo Mountains into Desert Landscape.

Telling visitors to Monticello about the road that loops through the Abajo Mountains gets them kind of excited; the idea of traveling up the mountain road into forest area, ATV trails, camping and lakes.  Now once you leave the boundaries of the Manti-La Sal Forest however, the road name turns to Harts Draw Road which leads down to Route 211.  Basically you now enter a whole new dimension of slickrock, shrubland and desert; those with a deep appreciation of nature and its wonderlands can't wait to explore.  Those who enjoy hiking, camping and ATV trails know its just a different way to have fun; instead of dealing with trees, it's sandstone, slickrock and sand...lots of sand.

Little bit of history and geological lesson coming up here now; the Four Corners area (where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet) is part of what is known as the Colorado Plateau.  While the Great Basin did encompass a good deal of Utah's land mass, our area of the state wasn't part of it.  However, it was underwater at sometime during the Earth's ever changing creation; reason why you can still find fossils of aquatic animals in many areas.  Long story short, the Colorado Plateau became a hodge podge of almost every ecosystem currently known to mankind; whether a resident or a visitor, you can't deny the diversified beauty of it all.  Ok, lesson over, lets get to photos, lots of photos.

As I mentioned in another blog post, the Abajo Mountain Loop Road comes to a turning point 10 miles from the Welcome Center and up the mountain road.  There are a couple of parking areas where you can look over the valley; at times all the green of the sagebrush can help you imagine what the area looked like underwater in those prehistoric eras.

 

 

As you head down Harts Draw Road there won't be any actual pull in areas, so park as close off the road as you safely can.  Simply go hiking over the slickrock and have a good workout; watch your footing though so you don't twist or break a foot or leg; step on cow patties (cow dung if you didn't know), or step on top of a Harvester Ant mound.  The ants normally won't attack if left alone, but will sting if provoked.






Or keep on driving until you reach the junction for Route 211; turn left for Newspaper Rock, the Six Shooters, Canyonlands and many other places to visit, or turn right to head back to Route 191.

You can basically pull off anywhere along the road and hike.  A good deal of the land is owned by ranchers, so if there is fencing, no trespassing and/or private property signs; these are big hints to stay off the land.

 

These lands are also open range, so the cattle roam free and will be walking, not just along the road side, but on the road itself.  Drive slowly, you don't want to frighten them into suddenly charging in front of your or someone else's vehicle.  There also may be calves around their mothers, so watch out that you don't injure them.








Now I just have to decide on whether to write about Marie's Place aka Home of Truth which is between Harts Draw Road and Route 191, or head back up Route 211 and tell you about Canyonlands and the Needles District.  Decisions, decisions....

Mary Cokenour