Day 17 – Mesa Verde NP

Our first tour today was at 10am at the Cliff Palace. After a late breakfast, we made the short trip over to the meeting location for the tour. While waiting on the terrace overlooking the Cliff Palace, we stood next to an Army Vet with a bright red cap on. A hummingbird buzzed him and we all got a good chuckle. There were also several swifts doing their acrobatics along the cliff and making all sorts of noise.

The Ranger led tour was quite good. The cliff dwelling was amazing especially when you think of the level of effort required to construct the dwellings given the stone and bone tools used by the Ancient Pueblos.

What is even more amazing is that the Kivas (shown below) are not dug into the cliff rock but instead the surrounding cliff rock floor was filled in to make these below surface spiritual dwellings.

The descent to Cliff Palace was about 100 feet and required navigating a narrow walkway and a short 10 foot ladder.

Cliff Palace didn’t appear to be a dwelling that was lived in. Archeologists believe it was used mostly as a spiritual place and for food storage. The lack of black soot from fire places lead them to believe that fires were not burned and therefore the Ancients didn’t actually live here.

Getting back up required an ascent up a steel staircase.

After our tour of Cliff Palace we got lunch at the park’s nearby café, whizzed through the museum, and then made our way to our second tour at 1pm at the Balcony House.

Balcony House was a bit more interesting to get to. It required us to climb a 32 foot wooden log ladder.

And then shuffle through a narrow doorway.

Balcony House has several examples of black soot leading experts to believe that the Ancients actually lived in this dwelling.

Getting out of Balcony House was also a bit more difficult than Cliff Palace. We had to crawl through a small passage way. Here Tom squeezes through the passage.

Tom heard Rob comment “It’s as if these passages were made for me.” Interestingly enough, Rob is the exact size of the typical Ancient Pueblo male from 1200AD!

We then had to climb a series of ladders and a cliff face staircase carved into it.

Above Balcony House, we got great views of Soda Canyon.

After our guided tour of Balcony House, we did a self-guided tour of a third dwelling called Spruce Tree House. Spruce Tree House is the best preserved of the cliff dwellings with 90% of it original.

Spruce Tree House has a Kiva with an intact roof as it would have been during its use in the Ancients’ time. The Kivas were covered so that they were flush with the ground above and stayed about 50 degrees year-round.

We went down into the Kiva to see what it looked like inside. Here is how the roof is supported. You can see how the roof was supported and the fresh air vent used to provide fresh air for the fires that would be burned inside. Note the small brick wall in front of the fresh air vent. This was used as a wind break for the entering fresh air to keep embers from the fire blowing around as much.

Afterwards, we checked out the nearby museum’s 30 minute video. During that time a nasty thunder shower moved through dropping pea sized hail and rain for 15 minutes. Rob ran out to the bike to save the helmets and our riding gear from being completely soaked. The bike’s seat still had quite a bit of hail on it from the storm.

While at the bike’s we could see another thunderstorm approaching. We quickly made our way back to the lodge but not before riding through more hail that Tom said was quite painful when it hit his knees.

Tomorrow Tom splits off from Michele and Rob to hot-foot it back home to VA. He has 1900 miles and will aim to get there in 2 to 2 ½ days. Michele and Rob will take a more leisurely route following much of old US highway 50 from Cortez, CO to Leesburg, VA. Tomorrow Rob and Michele will be in Pueblo, CO and hopefully will have faster internet service.