The Palace and The Pits

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

We really loafed around this morning, having breakfast while still at the Cortez KOA.  We pulled out shortly after 10am and backtracked into Cortez to fuel up.  Then we again headed for Mesa Verde National Park. 

Not fully understanding the markings on the park map, we stopped at one of the first turnoffs.  Fred, Wilma, and Barney all walked up the “short, gentle trail” according to the sign at the beginning of the path, and found that at 8500 ft elevation it was anything but gentle.  We huffed and puffed our way to the top and nearly froze doing it. It was still quite windy, and certainly not warm. Turns out the map markings only meant overlooks, not ruins. 

We continued on to the VC and stamped our Passport books.  We are having a good time with the books. Our next stop was at the museum. Since we already had our stamp for the park, we didn’t take our books in, and there at the stamp station was one we didn’t have. So Barney went back out and got the books.  There were actually two stamps there, but the ranger told us one was the same one we had gotten at the VC.

Behind the museum is the Spruce Tree House, a cliff dwelling. It is visible from the top, so Betty and Wilma found a bench and stayed there while Barney and Fred trekked down the hill to see it. The sign there said it was a strenuous walk and after the “gentle” walk earlier, Wilma wasn’t about to go down. It is a pretty large place with many rooms.  Amazing to think it is probably 800 years old.

Cliff Palace

Spruce Tree House

Barney going down into a Kiva

Barney in the Kiva

We then took the Mesa Top loop, and stopped, and stopped, and stopped!  There are many areas of different types of ruins.  Some on top of the mesa, and some cliff dwellings.  Most are visible from close to the parking areas, and some were just a short distance down a paved path.  One area is overlooking a fairly large canyon, and had a number of visible ruins, including the large Cliff Palace.  The wind had calmed, it was sunny and just warm enough, so we had a great day.

Betty discovered a stamp location in the Cortez area that we had missed.  We stopped at the rest area and called to see where exactly we needed to go to get that stamp.  Turns out it was at the museum in the park!  We did not go back!  Since we had talked to the ranger there about the stamps, seems like he would have told us if he had one for the other location. Oh well.

Grabbed a few snacks to munch on instead of fixing dinner, and headed to Durango.  Can’t park overnight at the Walmart there, so we are again in a KOA.

We will chisel out more on the rock pad later.