Way down Arizona way…….

To our most loyal follower….Barb. Sorry for the long hiatus, enjoy!

Made it to our home in Arizona (well, for the next month anyway!). The drive wasn’t bad, got a chance to spend the night in Cortez, probably one of your destination resorts just like it was on our bucket list! What a place, restaurants, hotels, a park, and close proximity to Mesa Verde! What more could you want?

Decided to do a little sight-seeing in Mesa Verde National Park. The Visitor’s Center is located in the Research Center about 1hr away from the cliff dwellings. Those National Parks people are pretty smart putting the entrance so far from the actual reason to go to the park, the cave dwellings, so that way the $20.00 fee doesn’t seem quite so much. Actually, pretty reasonable considering the 30 miles of paved road they have to maintain!

Cliff dwellings were neat. We went to the Cliff Palace site, named so because of the expanse of dwellings under one cliff; the Spruce Tree House, not a “tree-house” but a house by some Spruce trees; and the Balcony house. The Balcony House was a little different. It’s located directly under a ledge at the parking lot so unless you have a mirror on a very long pole or a desire to hike down the cliff face for about 30 minutes, you can’t see it. That’s what we did, we didn’t see it!

So why stop here????? The dwellings are a piece of Colorado history so yeah, we wanted to see it. Originally built by the Pueblo Indians around 1270 AD (Yep, damn near older than dirt) the dwellings consisted of 130 rooms, 8 “kivas” and housed around 90 people.  Had to be quite challenging to live here. The ranger we spoke with said they farmed the mesa with corn, beans and squash; gathered berries and pine nuts; hunted deer, elk and other critters and had fresh water at the dwelling. The problem was getting to a from these areas, not easy. The ladder maker was the richest guy in the tribe!

Somewhere around 1300AD, everyone decided to leave. No one knows why they left just that the village dwellings were abandoned and a migration south to New Mexico began. It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that the dwellings were discovered by local ranchers.

Cool place to stop and take in a bit of American history. There is a hotel located in the park that has amazing views so if you plan to come this way, stay in the park, not Cortez.

Numerous forest fires have left their mark on the mesa