Today was our first of several days in Mesa Verde National Park, but the day did not start off well. My coffee maker died! Dang! I just bought it in March before we departed on this trip. Well, we will deal with that later!
The Mesa Verde National Park is noted for it's cliff dwellings and they are located quite a distance into the park, so there is a bit of driving to get to the 'main attractions'. The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde are some of the most notable and best preserved in North America. There are over 4000 archaeological sites and over 600 cliff dwellings of the Pueblo people at the site. Doreen has been here before but this is all new to me.
We started in the visitor center, talking to a park ranger and looking at some of the exhibits. There is no 'timed entry passes' necessary here, but to hike to any of the cliff dwellings to have to have a tour ticket available through www.recreation.gov There are three tours available but we only secured tickets for the Cliff Palace. The other two include Balcony House and Square Tower House. Most of these sell out early, so you have to get online well in advance of your visit to get your tickets reserved. So we confirmed everything with the park ranger and then headed out for our drive to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum.
As we pulled out of the visitor center, Point Lookout stands high above us. It is an iconic 8,427-foot elevation sandstone summit in Mesa Verde National Park.
Point Summit is visible from many miles away, and since our campground is just a half mile from the park entrance, you can see it clearly from here.
We navigated Mesa Verde's brand new traffic circle and headed into the park. After presenting our Access Pass and my retired military ID card, we headed on into the park . The drive was beautiful with all of the green foliage (hence the Mesa 'Verde', Spanish for green), which directly contrasts the rocky, mostly barren but beautiful landscape that we left in Moab.
On the way to the museum we passed by the Morefield Campground, which by the way was full. The park ranger suggested a night visit there for some great star gazing. There is also a trail called the 'Knife's Edge Trail' that he recommended. It is a 2 mile trail rated as moderate, which means it is relatively short, they have a moderate incline, and may have some steeper sections.
After the campground we passed through a short tunnel, which is always cool! Sunglasses off, vehicle light on. Come on eyeballs, adjust!!
Just past the tunnel we stopped at Montezuma Valley Overlook, which provided an awesome view to the huge valley to the west towards Cortez.
Then things came to a screeching halt. The park is doing some road maintenance involving a layer of fresh oil (yuk!) and rock. Several miles are one lane, pilot vehicle led. Needless to say that snarled traffic significantly so we sat at a dead stop from 1029 hrs to about 1045 hrs. I am so glad we are finding out about this now rather than Sunday when we have our hike which starts promptly and we are supposed to arrive 15 minutes early. The pilot car did his u-turn and we finally were headed towards the museum.
Another interesting area we passed showed the devastation of the 2002 Long Mesa fire, which consumed approximately 2,600 acres of trees and brush before being extinguished. A bolt of lightning struck the top of Chapin Mesa on July 29, 2002, sparking the resultant inferno. The dense piñon and juniper forest, already dry from drought conditions, made a great medium upon which the fire spread. As the flames swept across the mesa, the park was evacuated, ultimately forcing over 2,000 visitors and roughly 100 workers to leave the area. Luckily the park service had already relocated a warehouse worth of relics to an undisclosed location outside the park, specifically because the weather conditions made the threat of fire a very real possibility.
These buildings are part of the Mesa Verde Administrative District, built between 1922 and 1938. These are modified Pueblo Revival style buildings which blended into their environment. All of this was a vision of Park Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum. The museum building is part of the collection.
Inside the museum there is a book store, exhibits and an introductory movie. The movie started on the half hour so we decided to view the exhibits while we waited.
Soon the movie was about to start so we entered the theater. The theme was "Footprints of our Ancestors".
What a great movie, narrated by native Americans of the various native tribes. According to their documentation, "It took over two years to create and was a collaboration between the park, the Mesa Verde Foundation, and the Colorado State Historical Fund. It involved planning, filming, interviewing, and consulting with the park's 26 affiliated tribes. The theme of the movie is how the Ancestral Pueblo people left behind footprints of their homes, villages, and cultural objects across the Four Corners area. They lived in Mesa Verde from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. The population at Mesa Verde reached several thousand people between 1100 and 1300, with most concentrated in compact villages of many rooms. Many Ancestral Pueblo people began moving into pueblos they built into natural cliff alcoves in the late 1190s." But then they started to move away from here - migrate, but their spirits remain, and that is one of the main points of the movie. This is sacred ground and it should be viewed and treated as such.
After we finally got back to the campground we had some lunch, gave Liberty some love, took care of a few things and then headed into Cortez to get a replacement coffee maker. It was under warranty for two years but I need a new one NOW, so I'm not waiting for the company to ship me a new one. Thankfully, Wally World bent the rules a bit since it has been over 90 days and they did a straight exchange! Score! Fresh coffee in the morning!
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