Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

2009-05-05

We were both freezing when we woke up the next morning and quickly got out of our sleeping bags and went for warm showers to try and warm up. We then had our usual camping routine of eating, breaking camp and we were off to Mesa Verde National Park shortly before 9 am. After going through the park entrance, we had a winding twenty mile drive through the park to the visitors centre. During the drive, we moved further into the mountains and had stunning views of the San Juan Mountains with its highest peak at slightly over 14,000 feet. We had decided to do the tour lead walks and stopped at the visitors centre to get tickets ($3 per tour per person) for the Cliff Palace tours at 10 am and the Balcony House tour at 12 pm. As it was a little after 9:30 am, we got back into the car and drove another eight miles to Cliff Palace. We arrived just in Time and Jo, our ranger guide, soon started the tour. She explained the basic rules; don’t touch anything and only bring water. With our group of approximately fifty, we took a short walk to an overhang just outside cliff palace. Jo explained that Cliff palace was divided into four sections based on when it was built. The section closest to us was the oldest and dated back to 1885 based on the wood inside support beams. 85% of the site was original. It is now thought that Cliff Palace was the “Marriott” of Mesa Verde. While it has 150 rooms, it is thought that only 100 people lived in the structure on a permanent basis and the rest of the rooms were only used when surrounding people came in to celebrate various religious events. Jo explained that the native people had their Walmart, Walgreens (pharmacy), and Home Depot (building supplies) in the valley that surrounded the area. They grew corn on the mesa top, but the corn lead to their low life rate of around 35 years. They would grind the corn between sandstones, which left grit in the cornmeal. Over time as they ate this, the sand deposits in the food wore down their teeth and these usually lead to abscesses that would prove to be deadly. One in five children survived and if women encountered issues during childbirth, they usually did not survive as the natives did not have any surgical knowledge. Jo took us to the Kiva inside Cliff palace and explained that the main sections inside were a fireplace, a chimney, a blocking wall (prevented the incoming air from causing the fire to get out of control), sipapu (a hole that represented that the natives had come from the earth and were in the fourth level), and benches that were used for storage. The Kiva would have a wooden roof with a circular hole at the open and people would sit on the ground when they were inside. While the Kivas were eventually used solely for religious purposes, evidence has been found the natives wove and slept in them. As we finished the tour, we climbed out of the Cliff dwellings using a series of stairs that were built in the early 1900s. We continued around the Cliff Palace Loop after our tour. We stopped at a few lookouts on our way to Balcony House. We had some time in between the tours, so we made our usual sandwiches. Luckily there was a nice area with covered benches to enjoy them out of the direct sun. Bryon started our tour off at 12 pm. He explained that the natives had all that was required for life in the area; water (there was water springs at the back), food (farming on the mesa top supplemented with hunting), and shelter (which they built). Bryon explained that the four basic trees in the area also provided building, weaving, fire, medicinal, and cleaning supplies.  Balcony House was more of an adventure to get into and out of than Cliff House, but we managed it fine. When we entered Balcony House, Bryon explained that there was a wall separating the two sections of the dwelling. There are various theories as to why the wall exists including defense and separation of the classes. The debate still continues with no clear winner. In order to get to the second section, we had to climb a small ladder and then through the back side of the structure. We were able to get close the blacken walls, which clearly indicated that the natives had had fires inside the structure, most likely to cook and keep warm in the winter. In the second section, we saw another Kiva. This one seemed to have been built and then repositioned so the there were two fireplaces, blocking walls and sipapus.  It is thought that this repositioning occurred later to align the Kiva south. The climb out of the dwelling required a long ladder, some stairs cut into the side of the rocks and another smaller ladder. The climb to Alcove House in Bandelier had seemed more adventurous then this one though. As it was getting late in the afternoon and we needed to drive to Moab, Utah that day, we decided to leave the park and missed the self guided tour of Spruce Tree House that contained a reconstructed Kiva roof.  We enjoyed the beautiful scenes of the mountains as we left the park. We took highway 491 and soon crossed into Utah, but there seemed to be no leaving or exiting signs as we crossed the border, only some truck weighting stations. As it was getting late, we decided not to go to Four Corners national monument, where you could stand on four state corners at once; New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. We also did not go into the Needles park of Canyonlands National Park. We arrived at the Moab KOA around 5 pm and checked in. Lori had tried to make reservations here the night before and had seen that there were no tent sites with power available. So had called that morning before we left for Mesa Verde and the owner had told her that there was a site that was normally not used for tents that we could use that had power. However, when we checked in, no one seemed to know anything about this site and when they called the owner, who was on duty that morning, she seemed to not remember any conversation. We decided to go ahead and stay there as the nearest KOA was another fifty minutes away and past the two National Parks we wanted to see. We set up the tent and pumped up the air mattress in the game room and were soon cooking our fajitas’ on the gas stove. Ian did a great job at making them spicy and we both enjoyed the nice favour. We cleaned up and made a few phone calls. We watched the final episode of season 3 Battlestar Gallatica and were soon asleep.

It is now thought that Cliff Palace was the “Marriott” of Mesa Verde.

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