Sept. 23, 2016 visit to Mesa Verde National Park- home of the cliff dwellers

Today we are going on an optional tour to Mesa Verde National Park. We started out by stopping at the visitor center for a short visit and to have our local guide join us.

Mesa Verde is approx. 40 miles from Durango and because we are on a bus which goes slower than a car it took about an hour to get to the visitor center. Since it is a mesa the bus had to climb to about 7,000 feet. After we left the visitor center the bus climbed to about 8,000 feet to the level part of the mesa.

views from the mesas

When we left Durango we had a slight rain but once we reached the top of the mesa we had a little fog.

https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm
We spent 4 hours visiting different sites on the mesa and viewing the cliff dwellings.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/early-cultures/ancestral-puebloan/a/mesa-verde-cliff-dwellings

Ancestral Puebloans occupied the Mesa Verde region from about 450 CE to 1300 CE and then they disappeared.
We saw the site of a pit house- first houses on mesa and then a kiva, second house and then the cliff houses.

The view of the cliff dwellings was pretty good and even better with binoculars. Hard to believe how the natives carved out the dwellings and how they climbed up and down from the mesa to the houses.

cliff dwellings

We did stop at the Chapin Museum at the end of the tour to see the exhibits. Here we saw artifacts and dioramas of life on the mesa.

At 1pm we dropped our guide off at the visitor center and the bus headed to Durango.
On the way down the mesa there were slight snow flurries.

At 2pm we got back to the hotel and headed for lunch and had free time until 5:45 when we had to meet at the bus to go to the James Ranch for a steak dinner provided by the tour company.

The daughter of the ranch owner gave us a short history of the ranch before we had dinner. Weather rainy so we did not get to get tour of the ranch.
At 7:45 pm we got on the bus for the hotel.

Tomorrow we did not sign up for the optional train ride to Silvertown so we will have a free day to sightsee and rest.