Thursday, we left Moab and headed south toward Colorado. We decided to make a stop at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which was a great introduction to the ruins we would be seeing in Mesa Verde!
We didn't have time to explore the actual monument and do any hiking there but the museum in the visitor center was excellent! The kids earned another badge as they learned all about the ancient pueblo people.
We continued on to Mesa Verde National Park and checked in to our reserved, full hook-up sites at Morefield campground in the park!
That evening, we decided to drive all the way down the Chapin Mesa and do the Mesa Top Loop before sunset. This would be our only way to see Cliff Palace, as the entire Cliff Palace Loop was closed when we were there. It turned out to be the perfect time of day to drive this loop and get out to see the different sites along it. We had the place to ourselves, and it was shady and relatively cool.
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| Spruce Tree House |
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| A Pit House |
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| Square Tower House |
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| More pit houses and villages |
From the Sun Temple stop, we got some great views of Cliff Palace!
We also explored the Sun Temple as much as we could. It is a symmetrical "D" shaped structure that apparently never had a roof. The walls were once probably 11 to 14 feet high, and very thick.
On Friday we headed southwest again, with several stops along our route within the park!
The first stop was the Park Point Overlook, the highest point in the park, with one of several fire lookout towers.
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| Operational Fire Lookout Tower |
Another stop was the Geologic Overlook.
We continued along the road to the Wetherill Mesa, and stopped for a self-guided hike to and tour of Step House. First, though, Noah wanted to earn his junior ranger badge and didn't wait for Audrey to finish, so he was sworn in by the ranger stationed out at Wetherill Mesa.
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| Noah earns his Mesa Verde badge |
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| Steep switchbacks going down to Step House... all you think about is how you'll have to come back up this way, too! |
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| Parts of Step House |
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| Step House |
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| Petroglyphs at Step House |
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| Kiva at Step House |
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| Handprints from shaping the walls of the kiva |
After a shady lunch back up top, we started the trek out to Long House for our reserved ranger-led tour!
On our way, we were lucky to spot a wild horse.
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| Hiking down to Long House |
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| First glimpse of Long House, with Noah taking a photo |
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| The ranger at Long House started our tour from here |
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| Preparing to climb up and into Long House! |
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| It was unbelievably cool and pleasant sitting inside Long House under the cliff overhang! |
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| There are even storage areas (like attic space) way up on that top ledge! |
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| Attic storage |
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| The next group lining up to come in |
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| Chris spotted some pottery sherds |
That hike back up wore us out for the day! We took the longer route back to the trailhead by way of the Badger House community, mainly for the flush toilets, but also to see some more pit houses and kivas.
On the drive back to camp, we also stopped at the Far View Lodge to check it out. We then went back to camp to relax a little and cook dinner. Noah was motivated to finish a scavenger hunt of the campground, with a promised prize for completing it. I took him to some of the further areas in my car, and we were lucky to spot a deer in an empty campsite.
Fajitas for dinner! I then coerced my parents into joining me on the Knife Edge Trail at dusk.
This trail is named after the historic Knife Edge Road, which used to be a section of the main road into the park.
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| Danger! Steep drop-offs |
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| Wildlife sighting |
We reached the end of the trail in time to watch the sunset!
Saturday morning, on our way out of Mesa Verde National Park, we stopped once more at the Visitor Center.
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Audrey earned her ranger badge! We also found out about the four corners patch, and that the kids needed to visit Aztec Ruins National Monument along with two others we had already done, Canyons of the Ancients and Mesa Verde.
Stay tuned to find out if we managed to squeeze in ONE MORE National Monument... |
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