August 23, 2015

Mesa Verde Pt. 1

Spent the last two days touring Mesa Verde National Park.  This is not a drive up and quickly be immersed type of park.  The visitor center and park entrance is over twenty miles from any cliff dwellings.  Many are much farther.  The roads to the interior twist and turn up and down around and in one case through (tunnel) several mesas to a central point where roads go to two different mesas containing cliff dwellings.  There is one dwelling tour that is self guided with a ranger in attendance to insure safety of the ruins.  All other tours are ranger led.  Tickets for the tour must be purchased at the visitor center (remember the twenty mile plus drive – one way).  Plan ahead and allow enough time both to see everything and to get to your tour on time.  Two days was perfect for us to see everything.  A day for each mesa and careful tour scheduling each day to allow for seeing non-tour sights on each mesa.  Each tour was very good and very educational and picturesque.  The ancient peoples possessed knowledge of science, engineering, and art that many people today can not grasp.  And,  everything was done without tools.  Couple all that with where the dwelling are placed and how they lived in them day to day – pretty amazing.

We took lots of pictures.  Will only post a few.

 

Cliff Palace – our first tour

View from trail going down to dwelling. Largest in Mesa Verde.

 

Closer view of small portion.

 

Tourist standing above a kiva.  Kivas were places for ceremonies and community gathering.  At some times of the year they also served as living spaces.  Every cliff dwelling community we saw had many kivas.  Even the communities of one or two families had a kiva.  Note: roof of kiva was supported by the stone pillars around the wall.  Roof was as thick as pillar to where Sue is standing.  More later on kivas.

Tourist again looking through a window.

Another kiva.  This one appeared to have additional entrance.  More on that later.

 

Balcony House – our second tour

Approach to this dwelling is different.  As with the first we walked down a series of sloping trails and stairs to get to dwelling level but on this one the trail goes below the dwelling.  So- -

 

Climbing up to enter Balcony House.

 

View from Balcony House

 

 

Probable reason for name of this dwelling.  First, note vertical seam on left of picture.  Structure on left was built sometime after rest of dwelling.   Second – structure extending out of sight to left is much the same size and shape as one seen with entry doors in about the same locations.  In building to left, access to second floor was through a hole in the ceiling of first floor.  Building in picture has no hole in ceiling.  To reach second floor of this house enter first floor of house to left, go up through hole in ceiling to second floor, exit second floor through window to balcony which extends across both building walls, traverse balcony to second floor window and climb in.

 

Exit from Balcony House is an adventure also.  First enter a slot a bit narrower than this one for about ten yards.  Next, crawl through a hole about 2 1/2’ by 2 1/2 ‘ for about eight feet.  Then exit through slot seen above.  Thought you were done?

 

Rest of exit is up this ladder and then stairs to top of mesa.