Cliff Dwellings: Prime Real Estate

Friday, June 5 – Mesa Verde: our 6th National Park in five days. However, this one was a complete change of pace: no more red rock. It’s the only national park dedicated to archeological ruins. The dwellings here date back to 1200 and earlier, but they weren’t discovered until the late 1800’s because they are in such a remote location on the Colorado Plateau. The ruins of the cliff dwellings are pretty amazing – like multi-story condos built of stone in the alcoves in the cliffs.

Say this ten times fast: “Ancestral Puebloan Cliff Dwellings.” Yeah, we couldn’t do it either.

Whenever you enter a national park, they give you some nice handouts. There’s usually a nice colorful map outlining some of the highlights and a newspaper from the park that contains some articles, info on hiking trails, etc. When entering Mesa Verde, they gave us an additional flyer entitled “Rocky Roads Ahead,” since there are a lot of roads alongside cliffs. It contained our most favorite illustration to date – a guy driving a convertible looking over the edge taking pictures while rocks are falling, with some pretty deadpan instructions: “Avoid rocks rolling toward your vehicle,” and “Do not approach fallen rocks.”

In addition to the cliff dwellings, the landscape was pretty beautiful, too. The name Mesa Verde means “green table,” which pretty much gives you a good visual for what the plateau looks like. However, there was a devastating forest fire here in 2000, and much of the park still is scarred with burned trees . We drove out of the park as the sun was setting, and the views were spectacular as we drove down off the mesa back and forth along the side of the cliffs.