Cliff Dwellers

Mesa Verde National Park was not at all what I expected it to be.  For starters, despite it's name translating as "green table," I really didn't expect it to be so green.

 

I also didn't really expect it to be so interesting in terms of archaeology. I figured it would be cool to look at a few cliff-dwelling ruins. But instead I found an entire mesa-top's worth of excavated dwellings from different times in the ancestral Puebloans' history.

I was too chicken to climb down the ladders into any of these cliff-side ruins, but the park movie that talked about it helped me visualize. There's also a really fascinating museum up on the mesa with tons of artifacts.

The best part, though, was the campground. Mesa Verde has one of the darkest night skies in the country, and I have never seen anything so amazing. I could see millions of stars. I must have laid out watching them for hours. I want to go back just for that!

Pics of the Day: July 20-22

July 20- Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. This formation is part of the Fiery Furnace.

July 21-This is Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Ancestral Puebloans (also called Anasazi) lived here from about 1200-1300 AD.

July 22- The first picture is from Newspaper Rock at Petrified Forest National Park. These are petroglyphs left by the ancient Puebloans of the Puerco Pueblo. It is so amazing that they survive in such detail after all this time. The second shot of my foot may not look like much, but it's actually me standing in Colorado, Arizona, Utah & New Mexico all at the same time, at the Four Corners Monument  on the Navajo Nation lands.