Travel Blog

Our last National Park before getting to the Grand Canyon was one that I had been anxiously awaiting - Mesa Verde. I love ancient ruins, so this park was right up my alley. The folks who used to live here were called, until recently, the Anasazi, and you'll still see that term in some of the older literature and on signage in towns and stuff, but it turns out Anasazi is kind of a Navajo dis that means something like "enemy ancestors," so now the more pc name for them are ancestral Puebloans. They lived in Mesa Verde from around A.D. 550 to 1300.

The park was awesome, but crowded, and I have to admit that detracted from my personal experience of the place. If you can catch a moment by yourself in a place like this, it can be, for want of a better word, a spiritual experience. Unfortunately, Mesa Verde was still so crowded, and with many folks who had no appreciation for the place, that I just wanted to get out of there.

But anyway, Mesa Verde is split into two main sections - Chapin Mesa and Wetherill Mesa. Wetherill Mesa was already closed for the winter, so we spent our time in Chapin. To get to the dwellings, you have to buy tickets for tours at the Visitor Center. Our first ranger-led tour was to Cliff Palace. This cliff dwelling was found in 1880 by two cowboys searching for their lost cattle in a snowstorm, and they're the ones who named it Cliff Palace.

Cliff Palace from the overlook before the tour:

Our ranger giving us instructions before we got to the dwelling:

Cliff Palace up close:

Our ranger let us walk around a bit, but we had to be mindful of where we stepped and where we leaned. Some folks were more mindful than others, but...And we got to look into the kivas, which they think were used for ceremonies and community activities. The engineering of these rooms was ingenious. They had the firepit in the middle, and the hole for the smoke to go through, but then they made these cool-air ducts on the side so the atmosphere inside the kivas was always good with nice, clean air. Neat!

Our next guided tour was Balcony House. I was nervous about this one because I knew to get to the 40-room dwelling, I had to climb a 32-foot ladder and to get out I had to crawl through an 18-inch wide, 12-foot long tunnel. Yikes! But I guess my acrophobia and claustrophobia aren't too bad when I'm actually doing something physical. I got a bit shaky on the ladder, but I didn't freeze up or anything, and it was actually kind of cool.

Balcony House:

Me before my turn through the tunnel:

After that, we were on our own, and we went to the Chapin Mesa Museum to watch the movie and look at the artifacts. Then we took the self-guided tour of Spruce Tree House.

And again, here, there were too many people milling around for us to get any real sense of place, so Phil and I decided to call it a day. We may try to swing by again, maybe in April, to see if it's any better crowd-wise. But overall, this park was still a great experience, and we would recommend going if you get the chance.

Starting tomorrow night, hopefully, I will be all about the Grand Canyon, one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World!