Fall and winter months often are best spent researching road trips, and to help you plan a trek through the Southwest with stops at such places as Mesa Verde National Park and Hovenweep National Monument there's a great new website that takes you down the "Trail of the Ancients."

The Southwest around the Four Corners states is a huge landscape of sandstone and desert and miles and miles of miles between destinations. But if you like exploring, this is a great landscape to do so. Along with spying ancient ruins in places like Mesa Verde and Hovenweep, the intrepid traveler can find many other, not-so-well-known ruins that hold stories in their stone walls and underground kivas.

If you're not interested in simply wandering on your own through this area, the Trail of the Ancients website provides a great deal of planning detail to help you chart your course, whether it's simply for a stop at Mesa Verde or if you want to explore the entire region.