Day 37 - Cortez

Mesa Verde NP
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Today I left Utah and travelled further east to Colorado and Cortez which is where I am staying this evening. The drive over here was fairly uneventful – the scenery was nothing spectacular and it is not as hot as it has been over the past few days. The main highlight of the day was visiting Mesa Verde NP which has some Ancestral Puebloan dwellings in the rock faces of the mountains here. They are dotted all over the park and you could choose to do self guided tours, or for the princely sum of $3 you could go on a Ranger led tour of different ruins which seemed a better option to me as I hadn’t got a clue what I was supposed to be looking at and also the Ranger led tours went to some of the more spectacular sites. All good. My tour took me to Long House which was in the quietest corner of the park, but to be honest there were not that many people in the park anyway. There were 7 people on my tour including myself, which I thought was very well chosen by me, as some of the groups get as large as 40 or 50 apparently. The Ranger warned us that the walk was deemed very strenuous and that if anyone was unfit and had any knee or lung incapacities then we shouldn’t go on it. I was slightly worried by this as I not only am unfit but have a dodgy knee too from my 1 expedition skiing when I broke my ankle. However, I ignored all warnings and went on the tour anyway. In fact, the walk, although climbing up quite a bit and at altitude as well (apparently at 7,000 feet there is 75% less oxygen than at sea level so the Ranger told us), was not too bad at all – I think they mean strenuous in terms of overweight American terms. The dwellings which were located in a recess in the cliff face were quite amazing, although I was not so impressed with the fact that they were over 800 years old than the rest of the Americans on the tour with me – I was smug in the fact that they have no old things, and we have lots. But I did keep this to myself!! After we finished our tour which lasted about an hour and half (I won’t bore you with all the details of it, I think you had to have been there for it to be interesting) a little bus/tram thing came and picked us up because you can’t drive out in that portion of the park. It then took us on a tour of some other overlooks where you could see other dwellings. This bus thing was something you would expect to see at Disneyland so I half expected King Kong, or the Terminator to appear from behind a tree suddenly with lots of pyrotechnics. However, this did not happen and the only pyrotechnics I was privy to were the lightning blots that proceeded to rain down near us, along with much thunder and dark rain clouds. This was fairly ominous and then proceeded a huge thunderstorm as I was trying to negotiate my 27 mile journey out of the park again through some really pothole ridden windy roads. Thelma kept her cool thankfully and we made it out in one piece, which I was pleased about! Tomorrow I head further east into Colorado, slowly making my way across to Denver by Friday.

Mesa verde NP
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Distance travelled today – 197 miles.

Distance travelled today - 197 miles

Bearwatch – 0.