We arrived in Cortez, Colorado on Friday evening. Having to adjust our clocks ahead for the first time this spring we worked on adjusting our bodies this weekend.
On Saturday morning we got around and visited Mesa Verde National Park. We started the visit by going to the visitor center to see the exhibits that had been found in the ruins.
There a few statues along the entrance to the visitor center of people & their role in the culture.
There was a wall with Pueblo designs on it.
The park entrance sign. We traveled along the park road winding on the switchbacks and around mountains.
There was a tunnel through a mountain.
At the highest point in the park is a fire lookout tower. From that point you can see 100 miles away in all directions on a clear day. It takes about 50 minutes after entering the park to get back into the real park area where the ruins are at.
The Spruce Tree House hike was the only one open when we were there so we did the hike. 10 days before our visit they were snow skiing on the roads into the park.
The hike took you down to a pueblo that you could look up close at. They had a park ranger there to answer any questions.
We drove the loop road that was open & saw several ruins from the overlooks.
We were able to get close to the pit houses & see what life was like in them.
The overlooks had views of several large pueblo villages built under the cliffs. Pictured here is Cliff Palace the largest cliff dwelling in north america.
On Sunday we started our day by going to the Anasazi Heritage Center. We watched two movies there on the ruins of the area & archaeology.
The entrance had a cat decorated with Pueblo designs.
Inside was a large area where you could try out things that the ancient people did daily. Here was grinding corn with stone.
We drove through Canyons of the Ancients. This area goes on for miles. The ruin sites are located all over the area. The statement was they have identified over 10,000 sites in the area, many that have not been researched.
Our next stop was Hovenweep National Monument. At the visitors center we watched a movie about what we would see on the hike.
The two mile hike through the cliff edge ruins took us up close to the ruins. This one was square towers.
This was Hovensweep Castle.
One of the last ones was twin towers. After this was a steep 80 foot path that led to the bottom of the canyon & another steep 80 foot path that led up to the top of the other side.
No comments:
Post a Comment