Mesa Verde National Park - beautiful

We arrived at camp in Cortez Colorado on Easter afternoon. The campground is just across from Mesa Verde National Park and is very clean, comfortable and quiet. It rates a 10 out of 10 on Good Sams. I stress again to anyone considering this camping adventure, contrary to anything you may have heard, good wifi is hard to come by. While a place may say they have wifi, being able to upload or download a picture is iffy and may take great patience. This is a great place with wonderfully clean showers, laundry, and various hook ups including full hookups. It even has a hot tub and outdoor gas fired fireplace and grilling area.
The park is visible from the campsite and worthy of a visit spanning several days if you are interested in exploring the various aspects of the park. Scenic views are one aspect and it does not disappoint along with wonderful hiking trails.

The geology of the park is very interesting. The white in the picture is sandstone, the darkest layer is coal while much of the rest of the darker areas is soft crumbly shale. This rock is soft enough that it has numerous fossils embedded in it. Not sure what the collection rules are here.

The weather couldn't be more beautiful in the park with daytime highs reaching only into the lower 70s with brilliant Colorado sun. The cliff dwellings that are open to public viewing are at the end of the park and not to be missed. There are many tours that will take you inside the ruins so check the schedule on the park website if this is something you want to do. The ruins were looted long before the park took over so much of what is treasured at a historical site now resides in private collections or museums. The structures themselves remain and it is a wonder to me that the park allows anyone to enter them but they do. Although there are many to see, there are many more not on public display. No pictures can do the ruins real justice as it is impossible to quantitate the distance between the cliff dwelling and the floor of the canyon. Many theories exist as to why they built in the cliffs, if they were running from something or to something or just built there because they could; in any case, they needed strong thighs and training children to stay away from the edge must have been difficult.

 This is the canyon below the ruins showing the width and depth - no time for bad balance here!

The ruins are more than a thousand years old and almost appear like a dollhouse. It is thought the occupants climbed up to the mesa with ropes made from yucca as well as climbing down with ladders. 

This is Cliff Palace perched on the edge of the canyon shown above. I could not get the entire dwelling in one shot so this is from left to right.

The dwelling starts out as an empty shell rock overhang. Rocks were chiseled as necessary and adobe mortar used to put them together. Wooden beams were used to form secondary floors. A ledge at the front was left as what we would call a balcony.

How long it took to take an empty shell as this one above and turn it into a completed dwelling is unknown. Petroglyphs are common and the inside of the ruin is often plastered and decorated with petroglyphs. There is a prominent structure called a kiva which is a round keyhole shaped structure yet the exact use of this structure is not clear.

  

There are ruins that are covered by aluminum shed structures for the sake of preservation. These structures are ones not covered by the cliff overhang and believed to be from around 700 AD. There is a reservoir that was excavated and thought that women collected water by walking down into the reservoir as there are steps down into a gently sloping walled structure and that they used a pottery ladle to dip the water into their jugs.It should be mentioned this is a recognized world heritage site and this is a civil engineering landmark.

Here are some pictures of the preserved ruins that are inside a metal building, note the kiva.

 

These ruins below stand completely unprotected without overhang or structure to protect them. While there are ropes and signs indicating the public needs to keep back, somehow I doubt this is much respected by most children. When we were there it was little trafficked but in summer, I cannot imagine the crowd.

In this area there is what is called Far View Village. This was obviously a large community and do note the circular carving in the stone in the last picture. It was a huge community.

Make sure to stop at the Visitors Center and later at the museum at the end of the park. The Visitors Center is before the entry and free to everyone. There are displays of pottery etc and some good exhibits. You can see pottery like that below and beyond that is a window through which you can see the library of artifacts identified and cataloged from the area.

I can't say enough good things about this park. Many of the trails leading to the overlooks of the ruins are truly handicap accessible with asphalt lined walks. While many parks claim to be handicap accessible, few really exist that have access to lookout points etc. The trail to Spruce House is accessible this way but one would need help as it is steep. Spruce House can be viewed closely and even gone in with limits without a ticket. We took the so called difficult trail to Spruce House and these are the pictures from that - amazing stuff.

We guessed this sign was of no importance.

We saw a beautiful bird before going down - not too sure what it is but it is blue and was nearly impossible to capture as it flitted quickly about.

On the way down, there was a wonderful smelling plant that was unidentified.

We saw this bus that really took me back. Hippie days.

The place is big enough to have its own zipcode and post office.

At another site is what is called The House of Many Windows. The windows are actually doors and there is no balcony with this one. How they got in and out and lived this way is still unknown.

The park is often shaped by fire and this is an example of the devastation caused by fire. How it looked when occupied by Native Americans is not yet known.

For us the most spectacular ruin is what is called the Fire House. It is a double decker ruin and takes up a lot of room on the cliff. This is just part of what is there. Trees obscure the view and impede photography so you have to use your imagination on this one.

There are no words to describe how magnificent this park is. From scenery, to hiking to history - it is amazing. I am lucky to have gotten to walk around in this park. 

So my friends know, while here I have had a tooth flair up to the point where it is excessively painful to eat or drink anything and is even painful at night. However, after having a tremendously bad night where I was kept awake most of the night, some sort of miracle happened such that I was able to have a very good day the next day with exploring and hiking. How that happens I will not question but just take it and be glad.

We leave for Utah, land of 5 National Parks, tomorrow. If coming this way, by all means stop at Mesa Verde. We took hundreds of pictures in a few short days. Unfortunately the blog will not allow me to post the short videos of the ruins and canyon. I will try to post those on Facebook.

It is going to be very hard to leave here - lovely area. Easy to see why early humans would want to live here.

Come, visit, stay a while.