Mesa Verde

This was the least crowded of the parks so far. Maybe because it’s not fully open until May 15, or maybe because it’s at 8,700 feet elevation and the coldest park. The Campground was closed so no chance of scoring a space. Like the other parks there is one road in but one of the many side roads off of it is quite long. Still that road was closed (Wetherill), and will be until May 15. The park’s full season is only 5 months.

We’ve all seen pictures of the cliff dwellings. But I didn’t realize the extreme, precarious nature of the dwellings from the pictures. They seem inaccessible. Apparently the Indians used ladders, ropes and carved toe and hand holds in the cliffs in order to come and go. Imagine every day climbing a shear cliff 40 to 60 feet. Here are some pictures. The dwellings are always under an overhanging rock so are nearly always in shadow.

The rooms are small, there may be 60 rooms in the largest cluster of dwellings. Why build on the cliff, and why live at such an extreme altitude, where soil is thin and rain is sparse. The valley below, the Mancos valley where we spent the night, is around 6,500 to 7,000 feet elevation and the soil seemed decent. The mesa top where they planted the three sisters has thin rocky soil. They lived in this area from around 500 AD to 1300 AD when they abandoned it.

Before living on the cliffs, the earliest of these Indians lived in pit houses on top of the mesa. Here is one…..

This one was built around 700 AD. It’s 2.5 feet deep and would have been surrounded by posts with wattle and daub between them, like we see at Angel Mounds. The oval at the top of the picture was the entry way, the rectangular extension of the pit at 2:00 was essentially the pantry. Grain, dried berries and nuts, and other stable goods were stores there. That’s the actual pit with very little excavation. Later pit houses were deeper and slightly larger. The last stage of their construction was the cliff dwellings. No one understands why they moved from pit houses on top of the mesa to cliff dwellings or why they eventually abandoned them.

Two life birds added today, a Clark’s Nutcracker and a Mountain Bluebird. I’ve seen them both in the distant past but never reported them to ebird until now. Saw a probable Ferruginous Hawk but won’t report it because I’m not sure of the ID. Saw 5 species of birds total, the above 3, house finch and junco!

Finished at 3:00 PM. Took Sammy to the Cortes dog park, he loved it. Them pow wowed on tonight and tomorrow. Decided to take the plunge and go for Big Bend. We’ve had enough cold weather and aren’t quite ready to go home. We are in the parking lot of Gallup NM’s Craker Barrel. There are 6 other RV’s here Should get to Big Bend day after tomorrow.