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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

postheadericon Cheri June-18-12

10:21 AM | Posted by Sharp's Travels

At 9:15 am this morning we headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  It covers over 52,000 acres and it preserves and protects nearly 5,000 archeological sites and 600 cliff dwellings.  We visited 3 of these cliff dwellings today.  


As we entered the park, we climbed back and forth across the cliffs until we reached the visitors center.  There we picked up our tickets to do our guided tours of 2 of the dwellings.  Now it was on to the museum and our first cliff dwelling, Spruce Tree House, inhabited by the Pueblo people.  We made the 100-foot decent down a winding path to check out this dwelling.  It is a self guided tour and is the park’s best-preserved cliff dwelling constructed between A.D. 1211 and A.D. 1278.  The site contained 130 rooms and 8 Kivas (ceremonial rooms).  It is thought to have been the home to about 60 to 80 people.  


We made our way back to the top and went into the museum, checked out the exhibits and watched the movie of the area and then it was time to hop back on the bike and drive 10 miles to the next dwelling.


Our guided tour of the Balcony House started at 1:30pm.  There were about 30 people waiting for this tour.  This tour was 1-hour, which included climbing a 32-foot ladder (wide enough for to people to climb together), crawling through a 12-foot long tunnel and climbing up a 60-foot open cliff face with stone steps and two 10-foot ladders to exit the site.  


Our guide was great and gave us incite on the Pueblo people and their life as it was back then.  The ruins were really something to see.


Our last tour was at 3:30pm.  We had only a few miles to go to reach the Cliff Palace.  It was also a one-hour tour involving descending uneven stone steps and climbing five ladders for a 100-foot vertical climb.  This was the biggest of the cliff dwellings.  There were about 150 rooms.  The construction in these dwellings was really something to see.  They had no tools to work with!


There were lots of people there at Mesa Verde.  The summer tourist season is in full swing.


All the dwellings were so interesting.  Our round trip was 180 miles.  It was a big day.  We didn’t get back home until 8:30pm.  The deer were out and about, so we had to watch the roadsides closely.  


We packed a lot into today and came home exhausted but what a beautiful day.


To see the pictures click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Mesa Verde.

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