Wild West Day 18 October 8

A “wow” day for sure. The Mesa Verde National Park. As we're still absorbing what we learned and saw, you might want to rely on Wikipedia or other web sources for backgrounds on the park and on Ancient Pueblo Peoples. It could help.

It was a cold morning, but fortunately no frozen pipes, so we head off early to the park. We spent six hours there doing the “free” stuff and absorbing as much as we could. It's best to let the pictures tell some of our stories.

The road in had beautiful sites of the surrounding mountains and mesas (table mountains...high points with flat tops; in the case of the Pueblo Peoples, these tops were used for farming corn, squash and beans and the cliffs beneath the tops were used for their pueblos or villages; amazing):

We even saw a coyote!

Our first and long stop was at the Spruce Tree House. Take a look:

David even climbed below for this shot.

I even made an inukshuk to join many others there. And I found an old bone:

We made a quick stop in the museum:

We took the Mesa Top Loop Trail and viewed The Square Tower House:

then some Pithouses and Villages:

The Sun Point View was amazing with its 12 dwellings, some one above the other. We think we saw with our own eyes (and cameras) all 12. These continue to be almost unreal. But they're REAL. It's awe inspiring:

On our return, we stopped at the Far View Sites, part of ancient villages that were highly populated at one time:

It's amazing that the Mesa Verde Pueblos were chanced upon by the Wetherill's, a ranching family. They kept things “sacred” and they remained so until Nordenskiold, a Swedish archeologist, studied the site AND took back to Sweden most of the artifacts found, the rat.

We went up the Park Point Overlook and were able to see many miles in the distance AND enjoy the mountains and mesas around us (great bookends for the trip).

An interesting modern find there was the Fire Lookout station, restored from the 1939 original and at the highest point in the park (about 8,600 feet and more than 2,000 feet higher than out campground).

A wow day and we returned to La Mesa RV Park (thus no new view from my chair) and ate leftover Mexican and recovered from a wonderful day.