Summer Adventures Recap Part V: Mesa Verde (The Green Table)

We decided to combine two trips and hit up Mesa Verde National Park on the way from Idaho. Though we do lots of weekend fun things all the time, this was our first little family vacation, just us, and it was SO fun! We stayed at a little motel in Cortez, Colorado and had a great time. (Oh, on a side note, we stopped in Provo on the way there and it was so fun to see my brothers!) We got there Thursday evening and got all settled in our place. Friday morning we got up and headed to the park.

First, this super ghetto way to entertain our child. He loved it and we loved it. That is dental floss...

We had a tour for the Cliff Palace and so we headed there. We were really excited about seeing these cliff dwellings. The Cliff Palace was definitely really neat, it was HUGE!

Waiting for tour to begin, this was at a lookout spot above the ruin.

This was a rare moment when Scott was still awake. I tried to plan the tours during his nap time because he doesn't appreciate the stop and go when he is in the carrier.

If you look up to the top of the cave, there is a shelf of sorts where they believe the people stored their goods. We were amazed at how resourceful these people were. As always, we were a little underwhelmed at how much everyone guesses how things were for the Ancestral Puebloans.

One of the Kivas

Looking back out over the Cliff Palace. Scott had, moments before, lost his hat by the wind down into one of the kivas. Thank you Tour Guide Man for getting it out with a long stick.

This cool tower had...

This cool pictograph inside of it. Great art!

Throughout the whole trip we would stop in on random dwellings that were in the park. I don't remember what any of their specific names were.

Cute Scott. The sun was SO bright

One of said random cliff dwellings. This one, if I remember right, they would get to by some foot and handholds that are on the left side of the dwelling. I was seriously concerned about the safety of their children during this trip.

That afternoon we had another tour at the Balcony House. This was our favorite tour. There was a smaller group and we got to go through tunnels, behind the ruins, and climb all over some neat ladders. This dwelling was right on the edge of the cliff. Like I said, totally worried about their children...

Ready to climb the 32 foot ladder.

The wood in the balcony of one of the houses in this dwelling. Hard to imagine that the wood has been there for hundreds of years!

Looking into one of the rooms. The balcony picture above is part of this house. These wooden beams are the ones that make up the balcony outside. Crazy!!

You can see how on the side of a cliff this dwelling is, just to the left of that wall is a-lot-of-feet drop to the canyon floor. We are about to climb around to the other side of this wall

Stan went first so he could give me a hand up, we're going up and to the left where that lady is standing

You can see the footsteps where the Puebloans walked too!

And we walked behind the dwelling in this little tunnel

And it opened up to this side of the dwelling.

It is amazing, as I've said before, to see the intricate skills these people had. And this man is amazing too.

And then we climbed through this tunnel! If you look close up at the top, you can see a wall behind the one Stan is climbing through. This was a defensive spot. AND this was all original. So cool!

Scott and I coming through

We became addicted to trying to find ruins in the crevices of the canyon walls. We found so many! There was such a HUGE civilization here.

Can you see the building? It's right above the word above.

Find the dwellings!

Stan checking out the other side of the canyon. It was so neat to use the binoculars and find little details.

Details like this: You can see the footholds that were used!

There were a few ruins on the top of the mesas.

This one had a bunch of kivas and the tower they "think" was watchtower.

We saw some fun animals during our trip. This horned toad, some deer, lots of birds, and I saw a bear!

Some of the ruins on the top were covered to protect them from the elements. This type of ruin had a different megalithic because they use large rocks to build.

A couple of the ruins had these little rooms that I could just imagine the women all sitting at the boxes grinding away. Women must have always been social butterflies.

Friday night we went back to town early to get dinner and just have a relaxing evening. Scott helped add excitement to our night. We had just gotten our food at the Chinese restaurant when Scott had a huge blowout. I hurried Scott and my messy self out to the car while Stan grabbed our dinners and paid for dinner.

On Saturday morning we went on our third and last tour to the Long House. It was similar to the other dwellings we had seen but was still neat to see.

I just imagine the builder stuffing these rocks into the clay.

The way that they had water in these dwellings were the natural springs that were in the back (thus the moss). They would dig these holes as places to draw the water that had seeped down from the mesa into the spring.

Looking down into one of the rooms.

We went on a little hike down to a ruin on Wetherill Mesa.

Neat petroglyphs.

Our last stop was the Spruce Tree House. This was another one of our favorites.

This dwelling had the awesomest levels. Look at those stories! I can just imagine a child looking out one of those windows. It almost felt like a movie set.

They had a kiva you could climb down into just left of me.

This was such an awesome family trip! We are so excited for future family vacations.