MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK

I made my second trip in my life to Mesa Verde National Park.  The last time I was here was about 28 years ago.  Daughter was around 7 years old the last time I was here and she will be 35 this year.  This was something that I was looking forward to.  I love the cliff dwellings.  I find them so interesting and they are very well preserved. 

However, last time I was here, they let you climb through them more than they let you now.  If I remember correctly, the last time I was here, the National Park Service was "in charge" of the cliff dwellings.  There is a historic society that is now "in charge" of the cliff dwellings and things are different.  There is also a museum in the national park.

On our way to Mesa Verde, we saw a flea market and decided to stop.  Barb ended up buying some really cute earrings that a Navajo woman had made and was selling.  There wasn't much of anything else that interested us, so we drove on.

We reached Mesa Verde about lunch time.  We had packed a lunch and found a picnic area.  Mr. W decided that he did not want to sit at any of the tables because there weren't any views.  So, he found a ledge for us to sit on and we had a great view.

Not a bad place for a picnic lunch.

We decided to visit the Blue Spruce House.  It is the only dwelling that the public can visit on their own.  The other two Cliff Palace and Balcony House, you can only visit if you buy a ticket and go with a ranger.  Back when I visited before, you did not have to buy tickets.  I remember climbing ladders and crawling through a small tunnel rock formation when I was here before.  From the description of the different accesses to the different dwellings, we figured out that we had visited the Balcony House before.  Since it was free, we are cheap, and it was the easiest access, we decided to just do the Blue Spruce House. This is the only national park that I have been to that charges you to visit something in the park.  There may be others but I am not familiar with them.

The Blue Spruce house

DWW and Barb

You use to be able to climb through it and walk through it, but not anymore.  Most of it is roped off and you can only stand and look at it.  There is still some of it where you can walk on it to take pics.  Actually, Mr.  W and I got in trouble because we sat on the edge of the "pit" to have our picture made.  More than 20 other people had already done the same thing.  But, a new Ranger had just come on duty and he came over and fussed at us.  Sorry.........

We then left and decided to drive through the park to other remnants of other dwellings.  The people lived here for a long time and their building techniques evolved quite a bit over the years.  There are pieces of the newer buildings throughout the park.

Tis is a dwelling that you can't get to. You can only view it from across the canyon.

This is one of the last structures before the people left the area.  They had advanced to bricks and mortar and built out in the open instead of under the cliffs.

We finally headed back around 5:30 that evening.  We did talk to a Ranger that told us to go to Chaco Valley which is south of Mesa Verde.  He said there was a much larger cliff dwelling there and you can walk all through it and it is much less crowded.  We are not sure if we will make it there, but if you are ever in the area and love cliff dwellings like I do, you might want to go see it.