Snakes and Ladders

Morning in Mesa Verde was a bit chilly at 44 degrees, so we ran the propane heat to warm up. Cell service doesn't reach the campground, but we were pleasantly surprised to find free wi-fi.

By 1100 we made the short climb from the parking lot to Park Point, the highest point in the park at 8,572 feet. You can see it is a bit breezy.

There is a fire lookout here where someone scans the entire vista every fifteen minutes. Two dimensional photos don't really do justice to the awesome views.

Moving further into the park, we drove the Mesa Top loop. Frequent pull-outs allowed great views of Navajo and Cliff Canyons.

Before coming here, I thought of Mesa Verde having one or two cliff dwellings. Three are six-hundred cliff dwellings and nearly 5,000 archeological sites. It is an amazing glimpse into a world gone by.

Here's one of the larger cliff dwellings from the opposite side of the mesa.

We purchased tickets to tour Cliff Palace today, the largest dwelling in the park. Beth decided she was up for 8-10 foot ladders. We climbed down several ladders to descend 100 feet down from the top of the Mesa.

Here's a shot taken in the calm between tours.

Our ranger was very enthusiastic and answered all the questions posed by our group. He explained that current thinking is that Cliff Palace was a social and administrative site, with high ceremonial usage. We had about fifteen minutes of unstructured time to explore some of the 150 rooms and 23 kivas.

What Beth didn't expect were multiple ten foot ladders on the way out that really made for a thirty foot height. To really add to the excitement, the man in front of me said "there's a rattle snake, please pass word back down to the ranger." The one thing Beth likes less than heights is a snake. One gentleman found a stick and held the snake down in a hole while we all climbed past. No one was bitten and everyone had a story to bring home.

Safely back in the parking lot, I had to capture a photo of this vintage pick-up from Oregon.

Our next stop, Pit House, was on the Mesa Top and could be visited without any climbing.

Actually housed in a building with a roof to protect the excavation, Pit House had good signage and allowed us to get up close to Kivas.

By afternoon it it was 75 and sunny. My Silverton Hat and sunglasses provided great sun protection.

We drove around to a few more archeological exhibits before heading back to the campground. Mesa Verde is a dark sky park, so we are hoping the skies remain clear tonight.

Back at the campground we had some four legged visitors. While folks had told us that this campground almost always has spaces available, it was full on this Saturday night. We're glad we had the site reserved.

Two days was enough time to get a feel for the park, but we could easily have spent more time here. Wetherill Mesa is another third of the park we didn't visit.