Our next stop of the day was Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. This place has also been on my "Must See" list so I was glad we were able to make it there. We spent the whole day hiking around looking at ancient Indian ruins. We were in awe at the amazing cliff dwellings this ancient civilization built and lived in. Their attention to detail and their precision in building their homes on these cliffs were absolutely astonishing! I mean I can't hardly build a sand castle and these people built whole villages on the edge of cliffs! Just look at the pictures and you will see what I mean:
Our first stop was the Spruce Tree House. This dwelling was tucked right up under the mountain in a cave. There were multiple rooms and kivas in this site and it was so cool to see. Because this dwelling was protected by the overhanging cliff, there has been little deterioration over the many years. This site is believed to have inhabited 70 people.
In some of the dwellings, you can actually walk right down inside the dwelling if you had a permit. This was one of them. Unfortunately, only a certain amount of tickets are given out each day and they were sold out by the time we got there. That was okay with us though because we were still able to get very good views of the cliff dwellings.
Our next stop was the Cliff Palace:
This dwelling was huge! No wonder it was called the Palace. The kids loved looking at this dwelling. They were intrigued by its size and all of the different rooms. They loved hanging out over the guardrail and looking down into the dwelling. They asked a lot of questions and they wondered how anyone could have built these homes. I wondered that as well...
The Cliff Palace is one of the largest dwellings and has 150 rooms and 23 kivas. It is believed to have been populated by 100 people. Also because it is so large and in a pretty central location, it is believed to have been used for social gatherings.
This is another view of the Castle Palace. This time, rather than right above the dwelling, we were viewing it from the look out at the Sun Temple dwelling on the other side of the canyon. As you can see, it is still huge even even from farther away.
The above shots are of the dwellings at the Sun Temple lookout point. These dwellings were smaller but still impressive. We were also able to locate the caches where ancient Indians stored their food. Those are the smaller blocks in the sides of the cliffs.
This kids also loved running along these guardrails and I was getting a little nervous because they fences were not that sturdy and there was nothing but cliff below them. Everyone was safe though so on we went.
This dwelling is called the Square Tower House. When this house was found, they used to let people down to look at it. Then the dwelling started to get really damaged so archaeologists and architects actually rebuilt the tower to look like it did before. Now this dwelling can only be viewed from the outlook.
These are pictures of another large dwelling called the Balcony House. The first picture is actually taken on top of the Balcony House. The house is below us. Because we did not have a tour permit, we could not access or see the House from this point. We had to drive around to the other side of the mesa and hike to the Soda Canyon Overlook to actually see the Balcony House. This was about a 1.2 mile hike round trip and the kids were not in the mood for a hike. Once we got to the overlook though they thought the Balcony House was pretty cool. In order to get inside the Balcony House, the tour had to climb down the cliff and then climb up a steep ladder to get to the House. From this lookout, we could see the tourists climbing the ladder and walking around in the dwelling. The other two pictures are of the caches near the Balcony House.
Along with the cliff dwellings, these ancient Indians also built pit houses underground. We were also able to walk around and explore these types of dwellings.
Russell and I were amazed at how these Indians built these houses. We didn't know how they were able to dig these deep holes in the ground. We didn't know if they had shovels of some sort or if they did it all with their hands. We were also surprised at how sophisticated the dwellings were. There were rooms for everything and vent holes in just the right places to allow good air to come in and force the bad smoky air out. I would have no idea how to do that but these people knew. So cool!
Another fun sight was the Far View Sites:
These sites were a collection of above the ground dwellings. Once again we were dumbfounded at the intricacies of these buildings. There were rooms for everything and each room had a purpose. I was also surprised at how well maintained they were for being centuries old. These people really knew what they were doing. All of the round rooms in these cliff dwellings and pit houses are called kivas. They were used for social and religious gatherings. Each dwelling had at least one so you knew these people were a believing people. I can't remember what the spiral brick meant on the Pipe Shrine house but I thought it looked pretty cool. According to the signs, the people that lived in these houses on the top of the mesa lived here before the cliff dwellers by about 200 years. I wonder why they decided to move onto the cliffs rather than stay on the top of the mesas? It seems to me like it would be safer on the mesa. Who knows. I just think they are cool to look at either way.
After a day of driving and hiking around and seeing what there is to see, we were ready to hit the road back to Moab. We had a pretty long drive ahead of us. During the time at Mesa Verde, we hardly had Charlotte in her car seat because we kept stopping and getting out multiple times in a short distance. Well she thought that was pretty cool to ride on Mom's lap and actually see what was going on without being strapped in. She was climbing all over the place the crazy kid! Well when we buckled her in for the drive back, she was not okay with that at all. She had gotten spoiled for car rides! But Mom and Dad won out of course and she had to get in her car seat.
We had such a good time at Mesa Verde and we learned a lot about the ancient Indians as well!
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