Mancos, CO October 4 - 21, 2013
We arrived at Mesa Verde RV Park hoping it would be nice enough for us to stay at least a week in hopes that the government would get their act together. It turned out to be the perfect park for us. They are winding down their season so there were only a few other rv's in the place. Our site was right next to a large open field with views of the mountains and no immediate neighbors. We loved it so much we ended up staying 17 days which is the longest we have ever stayed anywhere (except mom's and JT's of course). We spent a fair amount of time getting much needed chores done and relaxing. It was fabulous and we really didn't want to leave.
Cows were our only neighbors but they didn't care for the dogs.
One even chased Calcite.
View from our front door
Miciou and Midnight having the time of their lives.
Miciou made a serious dent in the mouse population at least one a day.
During the two weeks we waited for the Mesa Verde National Park to open we managed to have a few non-government sponsored adventures. We drove to Four Corners so that we could be in four states at once. I am sad to say that we had already been to these states so we didn't earn any new stickers for our map. The monument is actually on Indian land so they charge a fee to see it and they have booths all around it selling jewelry and pottery. We spent some time with a Navajo man who made the most beautiful pottery we had ever seen. He told us about other things we could see in the area. We continued driving to see Monument Valley which is also Indian land.
Arizona, Utah, Colorado & New Mexico
Monument Valley
"Mexican Hat" an eroded sandstone formation
On another day we drove to the Anazasi Heritage Center, but found it closed along with the National Parks. While we were parked in front of the barricade a very nice man pulled in behind us and asked if we were trying to get into the center. When we told him yes he said follow me to my house down the road where I have all of the brochures and information you need. We were hesitant, but also a little desperate and he seemed harmless enough. When we pulled into his driveway, his wife came out of the front door and Peg said "Your husband just brought home a couple of strange women" to which she replied "Oh yeah he does it all of the time". They were extremely nice people and did have all of the brochures and maps we needed. They told us we shouldn't miss the Ute (pronounced yoot, rhymes with hoot) Mountain Tribal Tour which we weren't sure we wanted to do because it was pricey. We left there and went to a pueblo ruin site called Sand Canyon. We hiked all around it, but it really just looked like mounds of rocks.
This guy was on the trail.
This is supposed to be the wall ruins of Sand Canyon...mound-o-rocks!
We used one day to drive into Durango to do some banking and to see the city. It was a beautiful drive over the mountains and through snow covered landscape. It had actually snowed at our RV park the day before, but it didn't really stick. The city of Durango was not as big as we expected, but had a fun historical downtown area filled with shops and restaurants.
Beautiful drive over the snowy mountains
We went ahead and booked the full day Ute Mountain Tribal Tour which required us to find someone to take care of the dogs. Luckily there was a very nice couple that lived on a ranch just a mile down the road that did some dog-sitting. The tour had to be postponed once due to weather as the way to the cliff-dwellings is a 35 mile dirt road that washes out in the rain. We met Richie Hays our Ute Indian guide at 9 am at an old abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere for our tour. There were five people riding in his van and then three car-loads following. The tour was fantastic! He stopped many times along the way to show us Petroglyphs where he would tell us the stories behind them. It was so fun to hear about them from someone who is actually part of the culture. The road ends at a grouping of cliff dwellings along a three mile long path in the side of the cliff. To get to the narrow path we had to climb down several ladders. Imagining the Pueblo people walking along these same paths was fascinating. They didn't have ladders, they simply scaled the cliff side! Richie was really knowledgeable about how they actually lived and he even sang us an Indian song when we were up at Eagle point. It was quite emotional to hear this song echoing through the canyon as it was being sung in his native tongue. This was one of the dwellings that was only accessible by a 20 foot ladder and up on a very narrow and high ledge. There were several in our group that did not make this part of the journey.
Old shards of pottery are everywhere
Really cool artwork on the pottery
Richie pointing at mother spider & the creation story
One of several ladders
The Ute's have left everything as they found it
A Kiva - ceremonial room with fire pit, ventilation and sipapu
Doorway into dwelling - small right?
View from dwellings
Looking down from Eagle point!
Richie singing a song to the heavens
On the edge!
Storage room with custom fit door. They stored corns, beans, and squash.
Look at her go.... you'd never know she is terrified of heights
View from the bottom
This is the trail travelled by so many 873 years ago
There is a dwelling behind us across the valley called the Tree House
Here is the Tree House closer up
and even closer - so cool
We took another day and made the drive to Telluride. This drive was through a national forest and the changing leaves were fabulous. We stopped and took a hike through the leaves and there was some snow still on the ground. When we got about five miles from Telluride it started snowing pretty heavily and the temperature was dropping quickly so we decided to turn around and head home. So we didn't actually see the town, but the drive was beautiful.
Who knew death could be so beautiful
Yellow aspen leaves everywhere
Raining leaves
Yep snow covered Colorado
When it looked like the National Parks were actually going to open we extended our stay again and boy was it worth it. We actually spent three days in the park. The two main cliff dwellings require a ticket and are ranger led. The first was the Cliff Palace which is one of the extreme hikes on our T- shirts. It is not really extreme compared to the other hikes, but we did have to climb down and then back up quite a distance. This is the largest cliff dwelling in the park with 170 rooms and it is really more of a "downtown" area than a dwelling. Puebloans came here to celebrate, trade and to govern.
Our Ranger in front of Cliff Palace
When they say cliff they mean cliff
Largest ruins in NP
They just built around this huge boulder
Actual foot/hand hold used by Puebloans. They carved these out of the sandstone so they could get a grip as they scrambled up and down the cliffs.
The second tour was to the Balcony House. This was a little more extreme as there was a 100 foot ladder to climb and a 12 foot tunnel to climb through. Both of these dwellings were built in 1190 A.D. and used for a couple of hundred years. No one is really sure why the people left, but it couldn't have been an easy life climbing in and out of these dwellings. At the time that the cliff dwellings were evacuated there was evidence of a long standing drought in the area. It is also thought that the population had grown to a point over the last 150 years that their natural resources were dwindling. About the only thing there was not a shortage of was sandstone to build the dwellings, but wood and water were a problem. Richie also told us it is also thought that the "Father" simply told the Ancestral Puebloans that it was time to move on as migration is a big part of their spiritual culture.
The balcony of Balcony House
This dwelling had these little balcony ledges outside their doors
Tunnel between dwellings
More of Balcony House
Mano and metate used for grinding corn
Scary ladder and ledge to get back out of the Balcony House dwelling
View from the top. As Peg said "more freaking chains!"
On our third day we drove the rest of the park to see the other dwellings. At the Spruce Tree house they have put the roof back on a Kiva and let you climb down into it. It was a lot roomier than we expected.
The top of a kiva with roof
Climb down into a kiva
Spruce Tree House
Square Tower House being repaired. Look carefully and you can see the scaffolding on the right.
We were in awe of the culture and evolution of the Ancestral Pueblo people. The time period preserved in the Mesa Verde area spans 750 years. Everything we saw out in the field and displayed in museums shows a people skillful at making a living in a difficult place and adept at using nature to their advantage. The cultural "evolution" over the centuries was fascinating. It all started 550 AD and as we worked our way through the chronology we saw how farming, hunting, gathering, tool making, pottery and housing changed. In the first 200 years alone they went from baskets to pottery, flat farming to terraced fields, spears to bows & arrows, from houses above ground on mesa tops to subterranean structures with ventilated fireplaces. Prior to this trip we were under the impression that these indigenous people always lived in the cliff dwellings. Wrong! Ancestral Pueblo people lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years. By about 1300 Mesa Verde was deserted. The big question on all the tours was always "why did they leave?" No one knows, but after this trip what I do know is they left on their own terms. There was the drought, crop failures, depleted soil, forests, and animals due to intensive use. So, like people of today when where you are isn't satisfactory you look for new opportunities elsewhere. Something else we learned, when the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde left, they joined thousands of other Ancestral Pueblo people who were moving south into today's New Mexico and Arizona, settling among their kin or establishing new communities. Today the Hopi of northern Arizona and the people of Zuni, Laguna, Acoma, and the pueblos along the Rio Grande trace their ancestry to the Ancestral Pueblo people of this area. Some are descendants of the ancient builders of Mesa Verde. May they live long and prosper!
We finally earned our shirt! All 5 hikes of the Colorado Plateau complete: Angel's Landing, Zion, UT.; Delicate Arch, Arches UT.; Navajo Loop, Bryce Canyon, UT.; Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, CO.; Rim Trail, Grand Canyon, AZ. which we both completed before this journey began.
This blog posting is dedicated to our good friend Cathy F.- P. one of our most avid readers!
Coming Soon..... Santa Fe, NM and Palo Duro Canyon, TX
