Today we woke and planned our trip to Mesa Verde, a national park, and World Heritage Site. The drive from Durango to Mesa Verde passed though a scenic yet spartan landscape – basically red rock dotted with tufts of grass and short brush.
After stopping at the entryway for a photo op, we continued onto the booths to pay our way into the park. We provided the ranger at the gate a sample of putty and got a great smile in return. Then it was onward and upward, as we drove about 15 miles on a climbing road to reach the visitor center. There we evaluated the options and decided to tour the Cliff Palace, the largest and best preserved of the pueblo village dwellings in Mesa Verde. After hearing that there were ladders and climbing involved, we decided to leave Aaron in the Jeep with a good book.
The tour we participated in was fantastic! Park Ranger Tom Wolf (according to him, he’s the only wolf in the park) provided an immense amount of information and plenty of good humor in the hour-long tour. We learned about the impact of the fires on the park and why the cliff dwellers may have moved down from the mesas involved (changing climate conditions), the energy they expended making just one brick (took one man 3 hours!) and the important role that the turkeys played in their culture (turkeys were protein and the Indians domesticated them with the corn grown on the mesas). We also learned about the engineering marvels known as kivas, large, round pits in the ground where the Indians honored the spirits. In addition to featuring benches where the Indians would gather in the colder months, there were air deflectors and something called a “sipacu,” which was a hole – basically a two-way street – between the underworld and the world above.
After the tour and on the way to the Jeep Jim offered one of our tour mates a can of putty. She was from the greater Kansas city area and was touring with her mother. We later found ourselves at the same restaurant in the park and had great lunchtime conversation with the two.
While leaving the park, we handed out a final putty sample and some material to a couple from Brazil who had gone on the tour with us. The Brazilians were elated to receive the gift and seemed unfazed by the sight of Jim racing down the path toward them!
On the way out of the park we stopped for a few photos. First, at the 1 million gallon water tank that helps protects Mesa Verde from fires and also at a high lookout point at the top of a winding road bordered with charred pinon trees. At the top it was very windy and as Aaron (and Jim) worked his way up to the very top, he spun and was tossed and turned just a bit. On the way back down, Jim shared a putty sample with a couple from Cedar City, UT coming up the trail.
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