Monday morning we got up early and checked out of our Albuquerque hotel and headed for Mesa Verde, Colorado, 245 miles away. We had a tour set up through the National Park Service that started at 1PM and check in time was 12:30. We arrived at 11:30 and had time for lunch before the tour started. The ancestors of the Pueblo Indian tribes were the ones who settled in the Mesa Verde area between 1100 and 1300. In the 1300’s they moved away from the area and to this day it is not know why they moved from this area.
The tour started at the Far View Terrace gift shop and cafeteria where we all boarded a bus and the ranger gave us a run down of what we were going to see.
Our first stop was of the Indian dwellings that were on the top of the Mesa. Our ranger gives a brief history of the site.
These living quarters dug into the earth at the top of the Mesa were covered with logs and dirt. These huts did not give them enough protection from the weather and their enemies. They later moved to the caves and recesses in the sandstone rock for better protection from the weather and any attacks on their villages.
Our next stop was the overlook at the Cliff Palace dwellings which were several hundred feet below the overlook. We met with a second ranger for the hike down and the one hour tour of the Cliff Palace.
The hike down to the Cliff Palace was quite a journey but not as bad as when the Pueblo Indians lived here. They just had hand and toe holes carved into the rock to climb up and down caring food, water and supplies on their backs.
Before we entered the cliff dwellings the ranger gave us a run down on the dwelling and how it was the main area of the village.
We kept together so no one walked into a fragile area and damaged the site.
We were allowed to explore many areas of the Cliff Palace to get the feeling on how it would be to live there.
Of course what goes down must come back up and the path up was much steeper than on the path down.
The tour also included a good rest and a great meal with some very good local wine at the Far View Lodge.
After this one day tour we headed out for our two day drive back home with a night’s stay in Farmington, NM and a night’s stay in Henderson, NV.
No comments:
Post a Comment