Mesa Verde Colorado

Mesa Verde is a region in southwestern Colorado which was inhabited by native Americans in the years from 800AD - 1200AD. This area is full of carved canyons. It is very dry, although a tiny river snakes around in the very bottom of the canyon area.

For safety, the people of this time would look for cracks high in the canyon wall, and then build their homes into the cracks. They would either climb up the sheer walls to get to these homes, climb up woven ropes, or construct ladders.

The site is only open spring to fall, and it is GORGEOUS. Page through my photos for a virtual tour, and definitely get out to see it for yourself if you can! Here is an example. In the below picture, the arrow points at a half-moon shaped opening on the cliff face. There is an entire village of houses in there, going deep back into the face of the cliff.



Here's another village, closer up. This image below isn't on the ground. This village is in a crack, very high up in a cliff face. Those are tree tops you see in the front area, on a steep slope.



We arrived here the night before and stayed in their Kiva room network, which was lovely. VERY comfy. We then spent an entire day here and slept at the Kiva again. Even with a full day start-to-end, we only saw half of the main route of roads, and didn't even go into the two main village areas first-hand. You can easily spend a long weekend here, if not longer!

The restaurant in the main lodge was nice enough, but there were waitress problems and it took us forever to get through the meal. There was wireless internet in the lobby, so we sat there for a while downloading our mail. We heard that there was some sort of a domestic fight going on in one of the rooms and they were calling in the sheriff. Apparently this is pretty rare - I imagine the peace and quiet of the landscape tends to soothe people - but people are people.

--> First Mesa Verde Colorado Slideshow Photo -->

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