Mesa Verde

June 23, 24, and 25th, 2009--- Arguably, the most recognized and visited archaeological park in the United States is Mesa Verde, and it has long been on my “bucket list”. Certainly far more “touristy” then I like, yet the whole experience was still incredibly enjoyable.

Tuesday- Arriving into Cortez, Colorado at about 3:30 PM my brother and I saw ominous clouds over the mesa so we pulled into Walmart and picked up a tarp and a couple of rain ponchos. Of course, the whole reason for our foray into the southwest on this trip was my move to Albuquerque and with my truck being pretty full of essentials not of the camping type, we would be ground camping on this trip and had every intention of staying a step ahead of Mother Nature.

We arrived to a pretty full campground and quickly set up our tent. Although my brother and I didn’t quite make it through "Engineering 101" we were pretty impressed that we rigged an effective tarp over our tent and didn’t kill each other in the process! Quickly we headed to the Morefield Ranger Station to purchase tickets for the next days tours of Balcony House and Long House. We were told that the “Twilight in the Cliff Palace" tickets would have to be purchased in the museum the next day.

The great thing about developed camping (especially at Mesa Verde) is the promise of a shower. After two days on the road and in Cedar Mesa it was sure welcoming to get a luke-warm shower and a shave! After dinner, and showers, the rain began to come down and we headed to the tent for a night of sleep beneath the pattering of raindrops.

Admittedly, we were pretty ambitious with our plans to conquer Mesa Verde. From all my research I had learned that most visitors were lucky if they could get two ruin tours and we were hoping to make all three (Balcony House, Long House and Cliff Palace); so there we were the first in line for the “Twilight Tour” at the crack of dawn on Wednesday. We were quite lucky because literally there were just three tickets left and we bought two… we kind of felt bad for the couple behind us!

After securing our tickets for the day we started our whirlwind Mesa Verde visit with an exploration of the Farr View Sites Complex. Impressive to me about this area was the evidence of aqueducts and the Far View Reservoir itself- how the ancient Mesa Verde people engineered the movement of water to their crops is remarkable.

 We then made it to the Long House guided tour. The actual hike and exploration of the site is only about 90-minutes long but it is spectacular and offers a wonderful look into how the Ancestral Pueblo people carved out a living in the alcoves from approx. A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300.

 

 

After Long House, Jeff and I explored Step House and spotted a snake warming himself on the ancient walls. It was awesome to look across the canyons and see dwellings in every vista. They estimate there are over 4,000 sites at Mesa Verde (most being inaccessible to the general public).

After exploring the Wetherill Mesa, it was off to see the Sun Temple, the overlooks, and then Balcony House.

 As a bit of advice: Balcony House is not for those who suffer from vertigo, or a general fear of heights. Climbing the 32-ft ladder into the site one gains an incredible appreciation for those adventurous enough to build on the faces of cliffs. 

While in Balcony House I'll admit I was getting pretty frustrated with our Park Ranger who barely knew more than the memorized script (later we would learn from his own admission that he wished he drew Death Valley for the summer) I guess not everyone is impressed with Mesa… Anyway- while we were in Balcony House our guide commented that there were some loop holes which looked strange coming out of a room and that nobody seemed to make sense of them and then he went on to something else.

Not being content with the assessment of the holes, I hypothesized that they were probably some sort of line-of-site reference, I crouched down with the holes and looked across the canyon. Sure enough there was another site across the canyon directly in the line of site and I took a picture as my proof. The Ranger didn’t really care but a couple of other visitors thought my little discovery was pretty cool. The reality is that my “discovery” really wasn’t new, line-of-site was incredibly important to the Ancient Pueblo people; the proof is everywhere… just goes to show that you aren’t going to get the complete stories from the Park Ranger scripts.

Can you see the small dwelling across the canyon from

Balcony House? Hint: It's in the left hand of the picture.

The ascent out of Balcony House is humbling and my brother and I were mortified with a couple of kids just hanging over the railings and more appalled that there parents didn’t seem to see any danger in a 600ft drop!
Needless to say, we were ready to get away from crowds at this point. Luckily the rains started to open up when we reached Spruce Tree House ruins and many of the fair weather visitors headed for the indoors as we hiked around the best preserved cliff dwellings.

After exploring this section of the park we were excited and ready to experience “Twilight in the Palace”. Limited to only 20 people, (and yes they even turned away a single person who would have been person 21) “Twilight in the Palace” is a 90-minute tour of Mesa Verde’s most popular cliff dwelling, Cliff Palace. The tour was led by a ranger who was incredibly knowledgeable and the whole tour was quite entertaining.

By the time the sun set and we reached our camp for the night the rain began to pour. It came in sheets and we were very glad we had a warm dry tent. In the morning we were off to Chaco Canyon. We still can’t believe all that we saw and accomplished in one complete dedicated day. We probably packed more into a marathon day then many families see in a week!

Definitely, Mesa Verde remains to be further explored in a future Twisted Travel!