Mesa Verde National Park

We spent the night in the national campground. It is run by an outside contractor. The sites were rather close together but not the worst we have had. Mesa Verde is a historical national park. The grounds most recently belonged to the Ute reservation and were home to many indigenous people beginning around 700 AD and lasting until somewhere in the 1200's AD. Archeologists have uncovered many of their homes (pueblos) from pithouses built in the ground, to multilevel stone dwellings, to the cliff dwellings last used in the 1200's. The national park maintains about 35 of these dwellings most of which you can see from short hikes to the canyon edge. They offer tours of three of the pueblos so you can get up close to the sites and get some information from the rangers. We did a short hike on the Sofa Pop Trail where we could see the Balcony cliff dwelling. Next we toured the Cliff Pueblo, a cliff dwelling. To get to it, we had to ascend many stone stairs and a ladder. This particular dwelling had many kivas, a large round area place for social and ceremonial events. One of the rangers was an intern from the Navajo tribe. He talked about some of the rituals and customs of both those of the past and current. The current native Americans hold these pueblos as sacred space of their ancestors. To get out we had to climb up many stone steps and three ladders. We spent the day driving the scenic highway stopping to see many of the dwellings. Back at camp we built a fire and had..... Dinty Moore Stew!Read more