Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Today, the park protects over 4,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings . In 1891, Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiold studied, explored, and photographed many of Mesa Verde’s cliff dwellings. Considered by many to be the first true archeologist at Mesa Verde. We got there in the evening after a ride from Carbondale Colorado with Mike, who left us outside Durango.
After getting the tickets and the camp set up there was some driving on the twisty roads.. peg scraping twisty, and the day was finished with a chicken from Walmart cooked on our campfire and a bottle of wine ! class.
Next day we saw the various dwellings, it seems hard to believe the mesa tops were once farmed by these people who lived in the cliffs below, but the houses were quiet clever in that they normally have a well in the back, as there are interspersed layers of sandstone and shale, sandstone soaks water, shale does not, so when it meets the shale the water bubbles out of the rock.

Once we had seen the sights we made our way to Arches National park in Utah! what a sight!