Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There (Mesa Verde National Park)

Welcome to my Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There Blog.

Today I’m heading to Mesa Verde National Park, a fascinating and beautiful national park at the bottom of the state of Colorado. I first caught a glimpse of this national park in a National Geographic magazine before we went to the U.S.A in 2007, and decided that if I ever made it to America, this place was on my Bucket List. I’m so thankful I got the opportunity to see it.

Highlights.

Cliff Palace tour. Ancestral Pueblo people lived all around the Mesa Verde area. The Cliff Palace dates back to the year 1200, and it is an amazing and surreal experience just to see it, let alone walk through it. Archaeologists are not sure what Cliff Palace was used for, though they are pretty sure it wasn't an ancient housing estate like some of the other nearby structures. They think it may have been a community meeting place where folks came to talk and trade. To get to Cliff Palace you have to go down a series of metal steps and then steep, uneven steps hacked into the sandstone - still a better deal than the tiny hand & toe holds that the Ancestral Pueblo used to scale up and down the cliffs! To get out of the Palace, you had to edge through a narrow crack and up steep stairs & finally up 3 ladders, by which time you were out of breath because of the altitude.

Balcony House tour. Originally we thought it would be too hard for our kids (lots of ladders, a crawl space to get through and steep steps) but after talking to a couple of rangers (who told us it was usually the adults who had a hard time with these things, kids were fine) we thought we'd go for it. The kids had a blast climbing up the 60 ft almost vertical ladder, while poor me quivered and silently cursed below. We were told before we went up that the only way back now was via a walk out with a National Park Ranger. So humiliation in front of the tour group or falling to my gruesome death on the rocks below (and possibly encountering a tarantula which the lovely NPR pointed out!). Hmm. I chose the ladder. But boy, was it nice to be on solid ground, even if that ground under my feet was 800 year old reclaimed ground! The view from the top was worth it to, and it was just awe-inspiring and such a privilege to be in a place with so much history. 

Spruce Tree House. We walked down a long, winding hill to see the Spruce Tree house (another one dating back to the 1200's and it was a place where people lived). Note the before and after photos of this walk – we were knackered! Spruce Tree House had a Kiva that we could climb down into, complete with a reconstructed roof, so it really gave you an idea of how these people lived. A Kiva is a ceremonial structure sunk into the ground and we saw lots of these in Cliff Palace and Balcony house, but all of them had no roof surviving the test of time. 

Museum. A very informative and interesting amount of informational displays about the area. So cute watching my two kids get their Junior Rangers badges – this time they had to repeat the Junior Ranger pledge before getting it.

We spent a fantastic day on the Mesa, and I’d love to go back there in summer to see some of the other tours that were closed for the season. 

Tracey