Mesa Verde National Park

Brian and I got up bright and early today so we could get on the road and be to Mesa Verde by about 9am. Why, you ask? Well, in order to visit the inside of the cliff dwellings at the Park, you have to be on a Ranger-guided tour which requires a ticket. Tickets can only be purchased at the Park (they’re not available online) and during the summer months, it’s common for tickets to sell out by 10:30am.

We had a 3-hour drive, so I drank coffee and snuggled with the dog while Brian drove and the boys slept. It was the most amazing 1 hour of peace and quiet!

(Yes, that is our cordless Dyson you see down there. Brian and I simply refuse to do life without it! One of our favorite purchases ever, we actually own two)

The sunrise over the mountains was beautiful and how handsome does Dusky look in the morning light?!

Mesa Verde was another Park on Trent’s “can’t wait to see” list. He informed us that we had to get tickets for both Balcony House and Cliff Palace. We arrived at Mesa Verde at just after 9am (it ended up being 3.5 hours of driving).

We were able to get tickets for Balcony House for the 2:30pm tour and Cliff Palace for 4:30pm. We were hoping for earlier, but we were just glad to get tickets!

The boys got their Junior Ranger booklets and worked on those for a bit until they needed to actually get out in the Park in order to finish the rest.

Our first stop was called Far View. It gave us our first look at some of the early Puebloan houses. The types of homes below are called Pit Houses, meaning that they were dug into the ground; only the top portions have been excavated. The Puebloans lived in these types of houses before they started building homes under the cliffs.

Next we went to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum. The boys were able to get all the info they needed to finish their Junior Ranger booklets. You can see some of the cliff dwellings from here.

We ate lunch, then it was time for our Balcony House tour! We were so excited to check it out!

Here we go! First you have to climb up this huge ladder to get into the cliff dwelling.

There are LOTS of tight squeezes and small spaces to get through in Balcony House. The Ancestral Puebloans were only about 5’4” (average male) and 5’0” (average female).

Once we got up into Balcony House, the views were amazing! There was also a pretty cool storm brewing in the distance.

We moved onto another section, up another ladder and through some more cozy spaces.

This round structure is called a Kiva; they were used for normal everyday life as well as for special ceremonies and social gatherings.

We had fun crawling through more tiny spaces, climbing more ladders, and walking along the cliff edge like mountain goats.

Just one more ladder to climb and we were back on solid ground! Climbing into and out of the cliff dwelling was no joke… it was steep!

We rushed over to our next tour at Cliff Palace.

We listened to the Ranger give her introductory speech and safety tips, and then, remember that storm that was brewing? Well it was all brewed! The rain started, which was fine, we could do the tour in the rain. But then the lightning began and the Ranger gave us a 10 minute delay. Then more lighting and another 10 minute delay, then another. Dax was patiently waiting out the storm.

Eventually our tour was cancelled. We were all disappointed, but Trent was especially disappointed. And since it was the end of the day and we had to leave in the morning, there wasn’t anything we could do. At least we got to tour Balcony House! Plus, we heard that was the more exciting one anyway.

One last little run around at the Visitor Center before we headed to our Harvest Hosts for the night.

Just wait to see what we do tomorrow, it’s pretty cool!