Days 11 - 14 Mesa Verde

Saturday the 11th was a cleaning day: we did laundry and cleaned the coach in preparation for leaving Albuquerque.

Sunday we left for Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. It was fantastic! The park itself was beautiful, but the cliff dwellings were so interesting and well-preserved. While there are some cliff dwellings you can hike to on your own, there are three that are only accessible via a guided tour ($3 per person for each tour): Cliff Palace, Long House, and Balcony House. Balcony House requires you to climb 30' ladders, so since I have a moderate fear of heights we skipped that one. I had no problems whatsoever with Cliff Palace and Long House, though, so I wonder if maybe next time...

It would have been difficult to fit 3 tours into one day anyway. Cliff Palace and Long House are on opposite sides of the park and it was quite a long drive between them. Plus there was a lot of road construction too. We signed up for the 10am tour of Cliff Palace and were told to be at the front gate no later than 9:15 in order to be there on time. We were a little early and was through at 9:08. But then there was road construction, with sections down to one lane and taking turns for the traffic to flow through. Then there were the slow cars that refused to go the speed limit even in the straight sections. We arrived at the Cliff Palace trail at 10:05. After a world record pit stop at the restroom, we got to the trail head to see the guide just starting to walk away. We called out and he was gracious enough to open the gate and let us join the group! Ten seconds later and we would have missed it. Here are a few of the many pictures we took. The camera can't capture the size, but these will give you an idea.

Long House was much more accessible. Unlike Cliff Palace, we were allowed to wander through and see a lot more rooms and kivas. Here's a picture of Long House from the trail.


This looks like we're climbing one long ladder, but it's really two separate ladders.


And here's a picture of Bruce and me with the bulk of the dwellings behind us. After this picture was taken, we returned to the trail and back to the car.

I wish we would have had time to hike to the other cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde too. But our time was limited. I hope to come back and see more of this national park.