Every Mile a Memory: Mesa Verde

May 14, 2016

Left for Mesa Verde, Colorado today. It was a long drive so we left at 9 and arrived at around 2. This was another pretty ride along scenic byways. We’re staying at Ancient Cedars RV Resort…about ¼ mile from Mesa Verde National Park…very convenient.

Free range cattle. This beauty was just about to cross the road.

Dirty Devil River

The view from Dave's side of the rig.

Pretty drive

You can see this canyon cutout in the photo above.

Mesa Verde

We drove to the Visitors Center (right across the highway) and got tickets to tour the Long House and the Balcony House ($4/each).

The Ancient Ones statue outside the Visitor's Center

View of the snow covered mountains from our campground

Our site at Ancient Cedars campground with Mesa Verde in the background

Then headed back to the RV to relax for the rest of the afternoon/evening. We bought some firewood from the campground store and had a fire tonight. When we were on the last pieces of wood, it started to drizzle so we pushed our camp chairs under the slide out and called it a night.

May 15, 2016

We left the RV at around 8:30 this morning to head into the park for our first cliff dwelling tour – The Balcony House. The rangers told us the ride out to the dwellings at Balcony would take about an hour and our tour was at 10 so we allowed ourselves an hour and a half just in case. Well, we could tell right away that the drive wasn’t going to take an hour so we started stopping at some of the overlooks along the way.

Entrance to the park

Stopped here on the way to our tour

You can see the windows (actually doorways) in the cliff

Our tour group was exceptionally large as a tour bus pulled in at 9:30 and latched onto our group. They call the Balcony Tour the most adventurous cliff dwelling tour. The one-hour tour involves climbing a 32-foot ladder to enter the site, then crawling through a 12-foot long by 18-inch wide tunnel, and then climbing up a 60-foot exposed cliff face using two ladders and a series of narrow stone steps. The first climb wasn’t too bad and the tunnel wasn’t bad at all…once you squeezed through the opening, you could stand up inside and then duck and crawl through the exit hole. Wendy wasn’t thrilled doing the last ladder and the chain fence/stone step section, but she did it.

The tour started with a climb down to the path that leads to the cliff dwellings

Then the climb up to the cliff dwellings (32 foot climb)

One of the balconies (the reason for the name Balcony House)

If you look closely, you can see decorative painting on the walls in this room.

A Kiva in Balcony House - Kivas are round chambers, usually underground, built in or near almost every village or home-site. Entry was by ladder through a hole in the center of the roof. They were likely used for religious, social and utilitarian purposes.

The dwellings - You can see some hand/foot holes in the rock just above my head. That's how the pueblo people made their way around the cliffs. No ladders back then. Aaah!

Dave using the foot holes to get to the next part of the tour

Waiting in line to squeeze through the tunnel. The tunnel was a security measure, limiting entry to the community to one at a time. Easy to defend if your attacker has to get on their hands and knees.

Wendy's view of the tunnel

There goes Wendy

Once inside, you could stand up. The inside was about 3 x 3.

See how we could both stand up in there. There was almost enough room

to get Dave's whole face in the photo. Once the next person climbed in, it was a little crowded.

Dave climbing out the other side. Ouch, my knees!

Then came the 60 foot climb

Someone in our tour group making the climb

The chain fence at the top of that climb

Wendy wanting to cry and holding on for dear life

Dave's having fun!

And one more climb up this ladder to get out

The view from the top of the two ladders and stone steps

After the tour we drove the jeep to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum parking lot. We were hoping to see the Spruce Tree House which is the best preserved cliff dwelling and is self-guided. However, once we got there we learned that the dwelling was closed due to repairs.

Spruce Tree House

Wish we could've toured this dwelling

So we walked down as far as we could to get some pictures and also hiked a little way on the Petroglyph trail, but didn’t have time for the entire 2.4-mile loop since we had another tour to catch on the other side of the park.

We also visited the museum while we were there. They had nice exhibits and a movie about the early inhabitants and geology of Mesa Verde.

Since they said it would take an hour to get to our next tour – The Long House, we headed there at one for our two o’clock tour. We arrived at 1:30 and had time to eat our packed lunch before the tour began. Our tour group wasn’t quite as big this time. The two-hour tour involved hiking 2.25 miles round-trip with steep switchbacks, stairs, and two 15-foot ladders in the site. The hike wasn’t bad at all and the ladders in the dwelling were slanted so they weren’t as bad as the Balcony House. The dwellings are amazing! Most of them were built from the late 1190’s to late 1270’s. Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the dwellings for less than 100 years. By about 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted.

The climb down to the Long House

The switchback trail

The Long House is off in the distance

The Long House includes 150 rooms and 21 kivas.

The climb into the Long House

After the tour, we took the Badger House Community Trail (2 miles) which is a self-guided paved trail through several communities showing 600 years of changing architectural styles. Our tour guide for the Long House dwelling had warned us about feral horses in the area and how they’re not real friendly and to stay away from them if you should happen to see any. Well, on this trail, we spotted three stallions. They were pretty far off when we first spotted them, but they were fast movers and caught up to us when we were walking along the trail. We had to get pretty close to them to continue our hike (they were BIG horses, we expected little mustangs), but we moved quickly.

Feral horses

Loved the color of this one

After that hike, we headed back to the jeep and the campground. Slept like a log.

May 16, 2016

We are leaving Mesa Verde today and heading for Heron Lake State Park in New Mexico. We were hoping to relax a little and not do any site-seeing for a couple of days. Well, the weather here is very cold…it was actually sleeting when we got here. It sounds like the weather is going to be bad for a few days so we think we’re going to move on. We did some much needed food shopping at a grocery store in Chama (about 20 minutes away) and decided to take a look at Heron Lake on the way back to our site. Well, they must be experiencing a drought because Heron Lake is almost nonexistent. So that sealed it…we’re moving on tomorrow.