Colorado, Mesa Verde: Magnificent, Mysterious Historical Pueblos

After our second visit to Silverton, Colorado, which we had decided to take so we could admire the scenery again and tour the local gold mine and Animas Forks ghost town, it was time to head back towards Durango and to leave the San Juan Highway, high up in the mountains, for good. From Durango, we headed west towards Mesa Verde National Park and during that drive, we decided that the San Juan Mountains area would be worth a visit again; we'll no doubt be back there once again in our lifetimes. Who knows when, though?

Mesa Verde was the last major sight in Colorado that we really wanted to see and learn about before leaving the state. To get there, we had to drive about 36 miles west on highway 160 from Durango, which was a good thing because we were ready for somewhere new to explore without a long drive in front of us, bearing in mind how far we had driven over the past week. The national park was steeped in history and contained some of the largest and best preserved ancient cliff dwelling pueblos in the United States. Without a doubt, we were sure that it would probably be the best place to learn and see firsthand how the Ancestral Puebloans, previously referred to as the Anasazi Indians, once lived there for many years.

We were woken early by the footsteps of a white-tailed deer on the gravel outside the entrance to our tent

About 1400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region of what is now the United States chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years, they and their descendants lived and flourished there, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of canyon walls. Then, in the late 1200s, they left their homes and moved away; no one knows for certain why they moved, though.

Mesa Verde, translated in Spanish as "Green Table", is a World Heritage Site and was created as a national park in the US in 1906 to preserve the archaeological heritage of the Ancestral Puebloans, both on the mesa and in the cliff dwellings. It has been said that the accomplishments of the Ancestral Puebloan civilisation is ranked among the finest expressions of human culture in North America. Now you should be able to see why we were really excited about visiting this important place of history on the continent.

Ancestral Puebloans built their dwellings beneath overhanging cliffs. The basic construction material used was sandstone that they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread, with the mortar used between the blocks being a mix of dirt and water, and sometimes urine. Living areas averaged about six by eight feet, space enough for two or three people, and there were also many isolated rooms to the rear and upper levels of the dwelling that were generally used for storing crops. The ancient Indians were experienced builders, as shown by the ruins displayed in our photo album for this journal entry. You'll notice the straight walls that have withstood the tests of time as well as the ferocity of the elements.

Our goal for that day was to get to Mesa Verde before nightfall because we had intended to camp inside the national park, yet we still had an aversion to setting up the tent and campsite in the dark. We hadn't camped yet during our road trip and the first time was bound to be the most difficult or awkward until we found our own rhythm in setting things up. Fortunately, it didn't take long to drive there and, before we knew it, we were ascending up to the top of the first mesa inside the park, heading towards the allocated campground site, Morefield Campground, that would serve as our place of lodging for the night.

During that drive along the edge of the mesa, we found ourselves in our rental SUV several hundred feet up from the highway below; we were provided with fantastic views of the La Plata and San Juan Mountains off in the distance. As we started our descent down the other side of the mesa, we finally came upon the entrance to the campground, where we needed to check in for the night. By that point, we had driven about four miles from the park entrance station just off highway 160, where we were able to enter the park for free, since we had purchased a US National Parks pass during our visit to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

When we walked into the campground office, we were met with unenthusiasm by the woman working at the desk, who was clearly just wanting to close up shop for the evening and head home. We learned that in order to camp for the night, we had to first go and choose a campsite, and then return to the office to pay for the spot. That was, therefore, what we did as soon as we got back into our car; the campsites were a mile down the road.

As soon as we arrived at the camping area, we were lucky to see a large white-tailed deer with antlers standing at the side of the road eating grass. When we pulled over to take some photos, it didn't have a care in the world and just continued to eat its dinner, even though we were only a few feet away. We were pleased to have approached such a beautiful wild animal so closely and we saw that as a sign of good things to come whilst we were in Mesa Verde.

It looked as though the sun had started to drop out of the sky by that point, so we quickly selected a spot within the campground where we would pitch our tent for the night, after circling the area's loop drive three times. Since this was to be our first night camping, we were very excited to get things set up and we didn't want to waste any time before all natural light was extinguished for the day; therefore, we hurried back to the campground office to pay for our site (just under $25, or £13!).

Reading the tent instructions was a slightly harrowing affair for both of us because we heard many strange noises during that time, which seemed to be coming from the woods behind our site. That made us apprehensive, thinking that something was lurking in the shadows beyond the trees and bushes surrounding us. Something always seemed to be crawling around outside our tent that evening and it didn't help that the campground office had alerted us to be on the lookout for black bears.

In the end, setting up the tent turned out to be very simple and our red and black tent was quickly standing upright, ready to accommodate us. The inside was quite spacious and we were very happy with our room for the night. Once we had set up our bed mats and sleeping bags inside the tent, we made dinner; rather, we opened several tins of Vienna Sausages and vegetables, as well as a bag of potato chips (that's the same as crisps for the British people reading this entry).

That night was a tough one for both of us. We had trouble sleeping because of the continuous noises that we heard during the night, the scuffles and rustling in the bushes right outside our tent, made by whichever creature decided to pass by the area. We were both paranoid that our tent was going to be attacked by a large bear, thinking of the warnings that had been issued earlier that evening by the campground office, due to several recent sightings.

The next morning, after having slept very few hours due to the discomforting sounds we kept hearing all night, we were woken early by the footsteps of a white-tailed deer on the gravel outside the entrance to our tent, as well as by its strange guttural, grunting noises that we never expected to be emitted by a deer. It was only 6:00am and there was no chance that we were going to be able to get back to sleep, but somehow we managed and woke up again at 9:00am to a rather peaceful sight outside. A mother deer and her fawn leisurely strolled around the area outside our tent, trying to investigate what was happening, probably looking for leftover food. The baby deer looked just like Bambi and we now know that Bambi was a white-tailed deer!

Once we had packed up the tent and put it in the back of our SUV, we headed over to the campground office to shower and get ready for a day of sightseeing around the national park. The showers were located next to the office where we had planned on eating a pancake breakfast, which had sounded good the previous evening when we saw it advertised. After showering, it was nearly 11:00am and we thought we would be fine because Kyle was sure that pancakes would be served until that time. He was wrong, though; breakfast ended at 10:30am, something that haunted us a couple more times during our road trip. Have no fear, though; the clerk working in the campground office told us that we would be able to eat further inside the park at Far View Terrace.

There was an awful lot of road construction at Mesa Verde when we visited, which was a good thing for future travellers within the park, but a bad thing for us since it delayed our drive on several occasions that afternoon. The first time that we were held up in traffic, we wasted 20 minutes before moving along the road to drive further into the national park. As a result, we arrived at Far View Terrace much later than expected and we were quite ravenous by that point.

Far View Terrace had a large lunch buffet being served when we arrived; there were several selections and we added most of the food options to our trays, filling them up to satisfy our hunger. When we paid $12 (around £6) each for our meals, the person who rang up our bill looked strangely at us for the copious amount of food on our two trays. All of the food we chose to eat that day looked really tasty sitting on the buffet bar, but in reality was quite bland and pretty disgusting. The only good thing about our lunch was the view from the terrace, overlooking the mesa and plains that expanded further beyond. Oh, and the fact that Dan's food was refunded; read the next couple of paragraphs to find out why.

Halfway through eating his chipotle turkey wrap, Dan noticed that the tomatoes on it looked rather white and a little bit fluffy. Thinking that was odd, he took a closer look and found out that his tomatoes had, in fact, gone mouldy. The tomatoes were furry with the mould and they even had black round spores at the end of the furry white bit, causing him to instantly gag and feel seriously grossed out. Kyle was worried because that was the one item that he had actually finished eating in entirety, even though the wrap had fresh tomatoes on it, something that he normally didn't like to eat.

Since each meal had cost us $12 and we were on a budget, Dan went to ask for a refund on his since he could not eat the rest of his meal without feeling sick. He spoke to the manager who initially apologised and asked him which batch he got the wrap from so they could remove the others. The manager didn't offer to refund the meal until Dan threw the question at him, whereupon the manager didn't hesitate and provided him with the $12 initially spent. We were both happy to get some money back for the pitiful lunch because the food wasn't at all good and neither of us particularly enjoyed it, regardless of the mould. One thing we did make sure to do before we left was to refill our soft drinks, even though we didn't know whether or not there were free refills, before heading back to our car to drive further into the park.

The visitor centre to the park was located across the street from the terrible restaurant. For the two main attractions inside Mesa Verde, we had to purchase tickets for guided tours that would take us to the cliff dwellings; self-guided tours were not permitted at the Cliff Palace and Balcony House pueblo ruins, in order to keep them as well-preserved as possible. The man selling tickets at the visitor centre sold us a 2:00pm guided tour for Cliff Palace and a 3:30pm tour for Balcony House; it was only 1:00pm when we bought the tickets.

The reason that the man sold us tickets starting an hour later was because the road construction would block our way for that duration, most definitely, according to the man, who was absolutely sure of himself and who also had a bad case of body odour that stunk out the entire visitor centre. We proved him wrong by getting through the construction and down the road to the Cliff Palace area by 1:20pm, just in time for the next tour at 1:30pm. Once we asked the tour guide if we could join his tour, we felt pretty positive about getting an earlier start so we wouldn't have to waste time hanging around.

We should back up a bit to tell you more about the layout of the national park, which consisted of two mesas, Chaplin Mesa and Wetherill Mesa. Chaplin Mesa had all of the main points of interest that we were interested in that day, bearing in mind the time that we had to visit the park (one afternoon). That route was a much more popular route with tourists whilst Wetherill Mesa had a few hikes and a tram that could transport people to the different pueblos, since there was no road to drive on.

Our first ranger-led tour of the day began promptly at 1:30pm and we were allowed to join the tour group. Tim was an entertaining and informative guide for the next 45 minutes. He taught us many things about Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling within the park and by far the most impressive; in fact, it is the largest cliff dwelling in America. The tour involved us descending uneven stone steps and climbing five 8x10 foot wooden ladders during a 100 foot vertical climb.

Throughout the tour, Tim stopped to give us interesting facts and tell us about the Ancestral Puebloans who lived there, at least as much as archaeologists have been able to ascertain. For part of the time during the tour, Tim was preoccupied with a large group of Italian tourists and their young children, who couldn't understand English and kept talking in Italian to each other, distracting those who were trying to listen to him speak. He became quite flustered and stroppy and we had to chuckle quietly to ourselves then.

The next tour was at Balcony House and we arrived there just before the 2:30pm tour started. We were really happy to join the earlier tour there, too, especially since it would save us an hour of waiting around doing pretty much nothing. The next tour guide, Sara, had us worried by saying that she had to count everyone before she would be able to allow us to join her tour, to make sure that there were not too many people already signed up.

Luckily, we were able to squeeze into her large group and we enjoyed her 45 minute tour of another impressive cliff dwelling. During that more adventurous tour, we had to climb a 32 foot wooden ladder with the open canyon below us, crawl through a 12 foot long tunnel (some of the, ahem, "wider" tourists were not able to crawl through and had to go back to the entrance) and climb up a 60 foot open rock face with two 10 foot wooden ladders to exit the site. During the tour, we learned a lot more from Sara and felt that we were much more educated about life in the US before Europeans settled there.

After we had finished the two main tours, we drove the mesa loop to see some of the other sights and pueblo ruins within the national park. We stopped at the Navajo Canyon viewpoint before moving on to a 600 A.D. pithouse and the overlook for the 1200 A.D. Square Tower House, a multistorey pueblo built into a cliff on the opposite side of the canyon from where we were looking. Then, we drove around the loop to Sun Point View and the 1250 A.D. Sun Temple, which was a mesa top pueblo ruin dating back many years before the cliff dwellings were established.

The last sight we saw was Spruce Tree House, a cliff dwelling that had an excellently restored kiva, one that we could actually climb down into and get a feel for what the ceremonial chambers looked like when they were originally constructed. All of the other kivas we had seen during our road trip had caved-in ceilings, so we could only glance down into them. The cool, dark kiva chamber at Spruce Tree House was really great to experience, and climbing down into the room is something that we will remember from our visit to Mesa Verde.

Something that amazed us during our trip to Mesa Verde was the fact that 70% of the trees inside the large national park were destroyed by wildfires caused by lightning, all within the last decade. Therefore, dead trees were seen for miles around, an eerie and sad sight. When we asked one of the park rangers about the trees, she explained what had happened and also that the park had decided to let nature take its course for the foliage to replenish itself, something that would take hundreds of years. They weren't reseeding the area because the soil composition had changed after the fires and the trees would not grow until appropriate nutrients were available from grasses and smaller bushes that were starting to grow again on the mesa top.

The overnight camping and day spent at Mesa Verde was very rewarding and we will remember our time there. We felt as though we had seen enough of the park to leave satisfied and we drove to the exit with the Four Corners area on our minds. If you want to find out about Four Corners, USA, click the link below to move on to our next journal entry. If you don't want to find out about it, then maybe you should spend some time looking at our photographs of the unique and mysterious Mesa Verde cliff dwellings.