On our migration south, we stopped in Colorado to visit the Mesa Verde National Park. We stayed at the Ancient Cedars Mesa Verde RV Park just outside the park. This park had a mix of history, views, and hikes.
This park contains many cliff dwellings where Ancestral Pueblo people lived for over 700 years about 1,000 years ago. This is one of the many views you can see the dwellings from above the mesa.
One thing common with all of the historic dwellings we have seen both above and below the cliffs is the "kiva". This common area was used mainly for ceremonial purposes.
We took one day away from the park and stopped at the Aztec Ruins National Monument where we toured this re-built kiva. This was the largest one we had seen in person and gives you a better idea what this would have looked like with a roof and painted walls.
At the park, you need make reservations to do a guided tour at ruins. There was about five tours you could take, but a couple of them were closed when we visited. We took tours of the Balcony House and Cliff Palace.
To get down to the structure, you will follow a path with steps to descend a few hundred feet to access the dwellings.
I was a little nervous at first, but the descent wasn't difficult or too much on the edge of cliff to get down to the structures. I imagine the residents back then did not have steel steps and had a more precarious pathway to get in and out to get food and water.
Several areas you need to use a ladder to get around.
Other areas they built nice steps to get in or out.
This was a view from atop the mesa of the outside valley below. There were many viewpoints in the park to see both the inside canyons where the dwellings resided and outside valleys around the mesa.
On our day trip away from the park, we stopped at Four Corners where the borders of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona all meet. This resides on an Indian reservation, and you pay a fee to get in.
We also took a visit to see the town Durango in Colorado. This historic town is a bit touristy, but was fun to visit.
We stopped for lunch at Carver Brewing Co. We wished we had brought our bikes once we found out that there was a bike trail here.
We also wish we had made a reservation to ride the train from Durango to Silverton. It was all booked up for days and looks like it would have been fun. This rail yard is preserving actual steam engines and historic rail cars onsite in their roundhouse. We did tour the train museum which had a huge model train display and had many engines/cars that were very interesting.
From here we head into our winter destination to the state of Arizona. First stop is a visit to the Grand Canyon.
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