Mesa Verde

This was the place I couldn't wait to see!!  I have always loved archaeology - old Egyptian ruins, Indian ruins, any ruins, finding old things and antiques...it all just fascinates me.  I like to imagine things in their glory day and the people of that era and I wonder what they were like - their hopes and dreams.  And then I wonder if someone will uncover my house 500 years from now and wonder the same about me!  Mesa Verde is such a cool place and if you ever get a chance to go, do it!!  We did The Long House Tour on Thursday, September 2nd.  It was quite a hike to get there, for sure, especially since we were at around 7000' above sea level and we live at 226' feet!  It was about a mile hike on a trail (we saw wild horses!) then another almost a mile on a really sketchy, narrow trail but it was so worth it!  Kenneth went all that way but didn't go into the dwellings.  He did get pics of me all up in there, though!  The history of how these Anasasi Indians adapted and lived in these cliff dwellings is so fascinating - they had everything they needed.  They built a whole town under a giant cliff and grew crops on the mesa above.  They had kivas for church and community meetings, separate "home" with rooms for each family, storage nooks for food, water that flowed and pooled for all to use...it was a self-contained town!!  I took so many pictures and picked my favorites so I can visit again any time I want...:)

The first trail was the easy part!

There were four wild horses back in this brush.

This map shows how big this park is...just imagine how many dwellings were all up in here back in the day!!

This is just one part of the sketchy trail going into The Long House

Here's another - it was about 5' wide but don't lose your footing - pretty steep drop offs along the way!

There were walls, windows, fireplaces, chimneys, doorways...all the things we have in houses now.

The guide said there were levels so this level would have had a roof and more rooms above it.

They farmed up top!  I'm taking pictures waiting for Kenneth to catch up.

See Kenneth coming up that sketchy trail?!

Can't you just see a neat and tidy little community built here with kids running and playing, women cooking, men bringing in the days kill of meat and bringing the harvest down?

Kenneth took pics of me wandering around...and climbing ladders!

This would be me stopped halfway up and about to have a panic attack.  My desire to continue my exploration of the dwellings was greater than my fear of heights and I did make it all the way up!

VICTORY!!!

I made it up the first short ladder pretty well.  It was that second one that almost did me in.

Must have been the kitchen - little fire pit, storage nook to the upper right and down into another room there behind the fire pit.

Inside one of the rooms. The "doorways" were sometimes like crawl spaces.  Not sure if they were just small people or if it just allowed for more protection.

This was the kiva on the right and the wood used for ceremonies.

A lot of these pictures are just from different perspectives within the dwellings.  

The kiva

This is where the water collected from the mountain.  They had those little holes all through there to collect puddles of water if there wasn't much, but sometimes it would pool if there was a lot.

The flat rocks to the right were covers for openings or cooktops.  Each dwelling had some of these.

Look at their stunning views!!  Kind of hard to tell the kids to go out and play, though.  There was a bit of play area for them before they'd drop off the mountain!  And if you can see those people way over on the right towards the top, that's where Kenneth was waiting for me.

There's Kenneth!!

Pano 

It was so awesome being inside this place!!

See the handprint?!?!

This was a storage nook for grain or other food stuff.  

The second stone would have been the covering for the storage nook.  They would have placed it over the opening and sealed it with mud to keep the bugs and critters out of their food.  The top stone looked like it was used for grinding corn into meal, maybe, as it had a groove in the middle.

The view standing in the yard in front of the dwellings

I didn't want to leave...

The whole park was just beautiful and I was so thankful we had the cloud cover.  It kept the temperature down.  It would've been really hard to do if the sun had been blazing!