We left Utah yesterday, heading for Cortez, Colorado, which has the main attraction of being the closest town to Mesa Verde National Park. We found another Econolodge, moved in for the evening, then walked down the street to the KFC... where Stephen finally had his Double Down. Yes, that's two pieces of chicken with mayo, bacon & cheese in between. No buns (because you don't want to load up on carbs, right?) - the chicken takes the place of the buns. Anyway, he said it was very good, and that we should be allowed to eat it in Canada.
This morning, we started off to Mesa Verde about 9 a.m. With a name like that, you kind of figure out that you're going to be heading to a mesa; nevertheless, the drive up is pretty spectacular. The road winds up and up the sides of the mesa, hairpin curves and all, and some pretty amazing views of the surrounding area. Of course, the driver isn't supposed to be looking at that. ;-) I think the highest elevation we hit was somewhere around 8400 ft.
In 2002, the park was hit with forest fires, and you can still see these vast swaths of empty bony trees where the fires went through. Incidentally, that was how we first heard about Mesa Verde - my sister Patricia had planned to go on a trip, but then the park was shut down due to the fires, and so she went to Vegas instead. Thus began her long love-affair with Vegas... but that's another story. :-)
Anyway, back to the mesa: It's 21 miles of driving along the outside of the mesa walls before you finally get to the visitor centre.
With your park entrance fee, you have the option of just driving around the park and visiting everything but the guided tours. However, we wanted a guided tour, so we stopped at the ranger's desk to buy tickets. At $3 a person (and since they weren't restricting tours today), we decided to do both the Cliff Palace and the Balcony House tours.
The ranger sternly warns us about the physical requirements of these tours. "You will have to climb a 32 foot ladder on the side of a cliff. You will have to crawl 12 feet through a cramped tunnel. Once the tour begins, you will NOT have an option to turn back."
Well, I wasn't afraid until now... but give us the tickets anyway, Mr. Scary Guy.
We went to the overlook point to wait for our tour to start. Our tour ranger gave another warning speech - there will be climbing, this is a high elevation, you must have water, etc. etc. No one opts out.
When the tour starts, you descend several flights of stairs - a modern steel set, then a lot of narrow, uneven stone stairs. You trail along the side of the mesa, and eventually come around a corner and are at Cliff Palace. It is certainly an impressive collection of buildings, mostly because they were all built into the side of the cliff by the Anasazi people (although the rangers said that "Anasazi" is a Navajo word, and the preferred term is "Ancestral Puebloan People"). The stairs were added, by the way. The original people didn't use stairs or ladders or rope - they free-climbed up and down. =:-O Yikes.
The scary speech is unwarranted. I'm not fazed by any of the heights, and the pace is super-slow, due to the-- (how to put this politely??? I don't think there's any way to do so--) due to the many old and fat people in front of us. I mean, it's a freakin' leisurely stroll, and there are people huffing and puffing. At the end, you have to climb up some stairs cut into the rocks, and some ladders to get out. Talk about a bottleneck.
Cliff House was nice, but it felt too slow and too rushed at the same time. Because the group was taking too long (because they were SLOW), and then the ranger was trying to hurry everyone through the sites to compensate, because there was another tour group coming up behind us.
Balcony House was the second tour - and for that one, I was a bit nervous about the heights. Stephen and I got there early, staked out a good spot at the front of the line. Yeah! It was a much smaller, more fit tour group (probably because they really discouraged this one if they figured you couldn't handle it).
Our ranger arrived, and we climbed down the stairs to our first set of ladders. That's the 32 foot ladder. Well, it is a bit tall, and I'm climbing for a little longer than I prefer, but I make it to the top easily enough. Then we immediately have to proceed through a very tight tunnel (these people were short and tiny, I'm telling you!), and into a little alcove with a ladder where we climb into a balcony overlook in the side of the cliff.
Very, very cool. The ranger gathers the group, then gives us some information about the buildings and the people who lived here. Then up another set of ladders, through another tunnel to a similar area, except this balcony has no railing. Since it's a 650 foot drop, we have to stand back against the wall, and the ranger stands out there (because they're immune to 650 foot drops, I guess).
Then, we have to crawl through the 12 foot tunnel. I have to take off my backpack to fit, and push it ahead of me. Crawling along, I discover that I'm actually short enough that I can do a crouchy shuffle, so I do that instead of crawling on my hands & knees. I am short enough to be an Ancestral Puebloan person, but I would be the oldest one they'd ever seen - their life expectancy was about 30 or 35 (probably due to falling off of cliffs).
Now we're leaving Balcony House, and the real fun climbing starts. There's a ladder up a short ways, where you then are walking up "stairs" - which are really foot-slots cut into the side of the mountain, with a chain on each side to use as a handrail, and it's steep, baby. Stephen and I are the first ones up and out, so we don't know if anyone else fell to their death - the important thing is, we didn't. (Whoo hoo! I didn't injure myself today!)
Back at the parking lot, Stephen laughs at the absurdity of the fact that there are handicapped parking spots. It's doubtful that anyone with any kind of physical handicap would even want to attempt that tour.
Anyway, Balcony House is awesome! Totally worth my $3 - and then some. After that, we drove around to look at the canyon overlooks, some archaeological sites, the museum, and went down to Spruce House, which is a self-guided tour of another pueblo. Again, I see people hiking in flip flops. What is with you people?!
It was another hot day, but by the time we left, some dark clouds were rolling in, and as we started driving out, there was lightning. Whoo hoo! Where do you want to be during a lightning storm? At 8200 feet, that's where! (You get a better view from up there.) And we did have a fabulous view of the storm sweeping over the mountains and moving closer. We did manage to make it off the mesa entirely before it began raining, and then it was a heavy-duty downpour. It lasted maybe 10 minutes, and then it was like flipping a switch - whoosh: it's done. Back to sunshine.
As it was nearby, we decided to head to Four Corners Monument. What's that? Where the four corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet up - so you can stand in all four states at once. Imagine our surprise when we turn in to Four Corners Monument, only to realize, "we have to pay?" This is a Navajo site - they don't accept our park pass. And they charge $3 per person (vs. a charge per vehicle - and by the way, Waskesiu does that too, and I find it chintzy. Charge per vehicle, dammit). However, we've just driven all this way - we're not going to turn back over $6 (no matter how much Stephen complains about it).
So, now the Navajo nation has $3 of Stephen's that they aren't going to give back, and all he got was a lousy photo of him standing in four states at one time. :-)
Now it was time to find a place to stay. We're actually in Ute reservation land, so it's a long haul to another town. The highway takes us down into Arizona, but we eventually turn back towards Utah and drive to Bluff. It is a very small little town (yes, with a lot of bluffs in the background), with a rustic little motel called the Recapture Lodge. And it has Internet! (Yes, I was surprised.) Lovely restaurant across the street. It's a nice break from the motel chains.
Oh, and we found out from the desk clerk that there has been far more rain this year than usual. Which explains why everything has been greener than we expected. Apparently, it IS much greener than usual.
So, right now, the wind is blowing outside, and there's a legion of crickets chirping outside. Tomorrow, we plan to go to Monument Valley. That's in Navajo land, so I'm pretty sure the $5 entrance fee is going to be per person, not per vehicle. (They're not finished emptying Stephen's wallet yet...)
This morning, we started off to Mesa Verde about 9 a.m. With a name like that, you kind of figure out that you're going to be heading to a mesa; nevertheless, the drive up is pretty spectacular. The road winds up and up the sides of the mesa, hairpin curves and all, and some pretty amazing views of the surrounding area. Of course, the driver isn't supposed to be looking at that. ;-) I think the highest elevation we hit was somewhere around 8400 ft.
In 2002, the park was hit with forest fires, and you can still see these vast swaths of empty bony trees where the fires went through. Incidentally, that was how we first heard about Mesa Verde - my sister Patricia had planned to go on a trip, but then the park was shut down due to the fires, and so she went to Vegas instead. Thus began her long love-affair with Vegas... but that's another story. :-)
Anyway, back to the mesa: It's 21 miles of driving along the outside of the mesa walls before you finally get to the visitor centre.
With your park entrance fee, you have the option of just driving around the park and visiting everything but the guided tours. However, we wanted a guided tour, so we stopped at the ranger's desk to buy tickets. At $3 a person (and since they weren't restricting tours today), we decided to do both the Cliff Palace and the Balcony House tours.
The ranger sternly warns us about the physical requirements of these tours. "You will have to climb a 32 foot ladder on the side of a cliff. You will have to crawl 12 feet through a cramped tunnel. Once the tour begins, you will NOT have an option to turn back."
Well, I wasn't afraid until now... but give us the tickets anyway, Mr. Scary Guy.
We went to the overlook point to wait for our tour to start. Our tour ranger gave another warning speech - there will be climbing, this is a high elevation, you must have water, etc. etc. No one opts out.
When the tour starts, you descend several flights of stairs - a modern steel set, then a lot of narrow, uneven stone stairs. You trail along the side of the mesa, and eventually come around a corner and are at Cliff Palace. It is certainly an impressive collection of buildings, mostly because they were all built into the side of the cliff by the Anasazi people (although the rangers said that "Anasazi" is a Navajo word, and the preferred term is "Ancestral Puebloan People"). The stairs were added, by the way. The original people didn't use stairs or ladders or rope - they free-climbed up and down. =:-O Yikes.
The scary speech is unwarranted. I'm not fazed by any of the heights, and the pace is super-slow, due to the-- (how to put this politely??? I don't think there's any way to do so--) due to the many old and fat people in front of us. I mean, it's a freakin' leisurely stroll, and there are people huffing and puffing. At the end, you have to climb up some stairs cut into the rocks, and some ladders to get out. Talk about a bottleneck.
Cliff House was nice, but it felt too slow and too rushed at the same time. Because the group was taking too long (because they were SLOW), and then the ranger was trying to hurry everyone through the sites to compensate, because there was another tour group coming up behind us.
Balcony House was the second tour - and for that one, I was a bit nervous about the heights. Stephen and I got there early, staked out a good spot at the front of the line. Yeah! It was a much smaller, more fit tour group (probably because they really discouraged this one if they figured you couldn't handle it).
Our ranger arrived, and we climbed down the stairs to our first set of ladders. That's the 32 foot ladder. Well, it is a bit tall, and I'm climbing for a little longer than I prefer, but I make it to the top easily enough. Then we immediately have to proceed through a very tight tunnel (these people were short and tiny, I'm telling you!), and into a little alcove with a ladder where we climb into a balcony overlook in the side of the cliff.
Very, very cool. The ranger gathers the group, then gives us some information about the buildings and the people who lived here. Then up another set of ladders, through another tunnel to a similar area, except this balcony has no railing. Since it's a 650 foot drop, we have to stand back against the wall, and the ranger stands out there (because they're immune to 650 foot drops, I guess).
Then, we have to crawl through the 12 foot tunnel. I have to take off my backpack to fit, and push it ahead of me. Crawling along, I discover that I'm actually short enough that I can do a crouchy shuffle, so I do that instead of crawling on my hands & knees. I am short enough to be an Ancestral Puebloan person, but I would be the oldest one they'd ever seen - their life expectancy was about 30 or 35 (probably due to falling off of cliffs).
Now we're leaving Balcony House, and the real fun climbing starts. There's a ladder up a short ways, where you then are walking up "stairs" - which are really foot-slots cut into the side of the mountain, with a chain on each side to use as a handrail, and it's steep, baby. Stephen and I are the first ones up and out, so we don't know if anyone else fell to their death - the important thing is, we didn't. (Whoo hoo! I didn't injure myself today!)
Back at the parking lot, Stephen laughs at the absurdity of the fact that there are handicapped parking spots. It's doubtful that anyone with any kind of physical handicap would even want to attempt that tour.
Anyway, Balcony House is awesome! Totally worth my $3 - and then some. After that, we drove around to look at the canyon overlooks, some archaeological sites, the museum, and went down to Spruce House, which is a self-guided tour of another pueblo. Again, I see people hiking in flip flops. What is with you people?!
It was another hot day, but by the time we left, some dark clouds were rolling in, and as we started driving out, there was lightning. Whoo hoo! Where do you want to be during a lightning storm? At 8200 feet, that's where! (You get a better view from up there.) And we did have a fabulous view of the storm sweeping over the mountains and moving closer. We did manage to make it off the mesa entirely before it began raining, and then it was a heavy-duty downpour. It lasted maybe 10 minutes, and then it was like flipping a switch - whoosh: it's done. Back to sunshine.
As it was nearby, we decided to head to Four Corners Monument. What's that? Where the four corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet up - so you can stand in all four states at once. Imagine our surprise when we turn in to Four Corners Monument, only to realize, "we have to pay?" This is a Navajo site - they don't accept our park pass. And they charge $3 per person (vs. a charge per vehicle - and by the way, Waskesiu does that too, and I find it chintzy. Charge per vehicle, dammit). However, we've just driven all this way - we're not going to turn back over $6 (no matter how much Stephen complains about it).
So, now the Navajo nation has $3 of Stephen's that they aren't going to give back, and all he got was a lousy photo of him standing in four states at one time. :-)
Now it was time to find a place to stay. We're actually in Ute reservation land, so it's a long haul to another town. The highway takes us down into Arizona, but we eventually turn back towards Utah and drive to Bluff. It is a very small little town (yes, with a lot of bluffs in the background), with a rustic little motel called the Recapture Lodge. And it has Internet! (Yes, I was surprised.) Lovely restaurant across the street. It's a nice break from the motel chains.
Oh, and we found out from the desk clerk that there has been far more rain this year than usual. Which explains why everything has been greener than we expected. Apparently, it IS much greener than usual.
So, right now, the wind is blowing outside, and there's a legion of crickets chirping outside. Tomorrow, we plan to go to Monument Valley. That's in Navajo land, so I'm pretty sure the $5 entrance fee is going to be per person, not per vehicle. (They're not finished emptying Stephen's wallet yet...)
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