A Quick Trip to Mesa Verde National Park

 We were in southwestern Colorado for a beautiful family wedding, and decided to take advantage of being close to Mesa Verde and swing over for a visit afterwards. We started at the Visitor Center, located just off the highway. It took us a little while to figure out what the statue was--an Ancestral Pueblo Indian climbing with a basket.

Then we headed up the steep road. I remembered visiting Mesa Verde when I was 15 years old. On that trip, we talked with a bicyclist who had come up the many switchbacks. We asked how he did it. He responded, "I ate a Snickers at the bottom, and that gave me energy." Funny how I remembered that!

Decades later, the road was steep, but not nearly as much as the Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive in Great Basin National Park. And we were there in the hot afternoon, so we didn't see any bicyclists. We did stop at nearly every overlook. Here's one with a great view of the Mancos Valley and the San Juan Mountains in the background:

Next we went and visited the Fire Tower. Desert Boy declared he wanted to be a fire lookout for a summer. He may have changed his mind a bit when we told him usually there's no cell service or wifi at a fire lookout. 

He had a lot of fun using the scopes to look at far away things, like Shiprock to the south.

Next up we checked into the Far View Lodge and rested a bit. It was hot, so it was nice to take a little siesta. Then we got up and headed to the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum and the views of Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling. Due to rock fall we couldn't go down to it, but we did get a nice view.

We found a shady spot and contemplated the cliff dwelling, built about 1200 AD and inhabited for about a hundred years.  Then we went in and watched a video, which was a quick way to assimilate some of the history. The exhibits looked at least 50 years old and were of the pottery-lined-up-along-a-shelf type. I was a little underwhelmed.

 Then we headed to the Mesa Top 6-mile loop drive and stopped at each of the pullovers. Doing it at about 6 pm on Labor Day Weekend worked out pretty well; most people had already left for the day. Plus we got some great light. The Square Tower House was especially striking.

Although there are many cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, there are many mesa top sites, where people lived earlier. Some of these sites were protected under roofs.

But the cliff dwellings really captured our imaginations.

What would it have been like to live so close to your family? 

We visited more places and then headed to the cafeteria at Far View Terrace just before it closed to eat dinner. The soup was especially delicious. And they have ice cream! Desert Girl and I walked back to the lodge from there, seeing the old visitor center and walking under the road to walk up the winding ramp to it. We realized that it looked like an old kiva.

 The lodge was very nice, and we had great views from our room.

We were a few days past the new moon, so a crescent moon was hanging out to the west. Desert Girl and I went out on the balcony and watched Jupiter and Saturn appear. Then we saw Antares, the red star in the constellation Scorpius. And not long after, we could make out the asterism the Teapot just to the east, pouring out the milk into the Milky Way. I tried a Milky Way shot from the railing and found there was a lot of light pollution.


I wanted to do some night sky photography in the park, but all the cultural sites are closed at sunset, so we made do with getting a photo of the kiva-like old visitor center, with Desert Girl looking up to the sky.


The next morning we got up early because we had reservations for the Early Bird Cliff Palace Tour. This was one of the few cliff dwelling tours we could reserve in advance, and knowing it was a holiday weekend and we had limited time, it worked out well for us. The view from the overlook was amazing. Cliff Palace was the largest cliff dwelling in the area, home to about 100 people. We imagined our town in there. Yikes!

While we waited for the park ranger, I noticed this Utah juniper that was barely alive. I went to investigate and found some nice stripbarking, where just a little bit of bark keeps the tree alive. We see it often in the old bristlecone pine trees. 

The the tour started, and we went down some stairs and then up a ladder.

This led us to another great view of Cliff Palace.

We were the first ones there that morning, so it was nice and quiet, and we spent a couple minutes just being quiet and observing. Then the ranger helped us learn lots more about it.

Nowadays oak trees and shrubs border the cliff dwellings, but back about 800 years ago, most of the vegetation would have been cleared for buildings and fires.

Next we walked right next to some of the walls, observing how they used the rock that had fallen in the alcove to construct the buildings. The mortar was made of the nearby dirt, which had an ideal ratio of clay and sand.

We were about to get even closer. The kids were right up close to the ranger!

We looked at some kivas.

And then we looked in this four-story tower.


Way up there, we could see that not everything was monochrome--there was some white and red paint preserved. How cool!

I spent some time looking carefully at the mortar and found at least three different types, mainly due to different restoration techniques.

A parting look through a window.

I wanted to linger longer, but it was time to go.

We walked past the ladder and long grab-it tool to retrieve things that people drop into the dwellings.

Then it was time to go up some steps and ladders to get pack to the parking lot.

The Ancestral Pueblo people had used toe and hand holds to climb out. I don't think climbing out would have been that hard, but climbing down would have been a different story! 

We really enjoyed our brief visit to Mesa Verde National Park. There's still more to do--Balcony House, plus all the sites on Weatherill Mesa. And there are a few hikes that we didn't do. There's no backpacking or cross-country hiking in the park, so it wouldn't take too long to see all the permitted places. But it certainly takes a long time to process the amazing amount of history that the park protects. And it's so fun to imagine a very different way of life than is now in the area. One thing that was repeated to us is that the area used to have many more inhabitants than it does now.

If you have a chance, check it out! We'd love to go back and see the many other cultural protected places in the area.