July 1, 2015
We had two tours scheduled at Mesa Verde on Wednesday. We would tour the Cliff Palace in the morning and Balcony House in the afternoon. The timing of the tours was based on advice we got a couple of days earlier from Gaelyn on the North Rim. She was a ranger at Mesa Verde before working at the Grand Canyon. This kept us out of the sun on both tours. That was some good advice. Not only did we stay cool but I didn't have to fight the harsh light when I was taking photos. I only took my pocket Canon SD770 with me on the tours and I'm very happy with the pictures it captured. I would have been far less happy if I'd had to work with that camera in the bright light that we had later at Spruce Tree House.
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace |
The Cliff Palace is the largest of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. It's an amazing sight to behold from the observation point before taking the tour. Another benefit to taking the Cliff Palace tour first was that there is a nice observation point to view the dwellings and we were not dealing with any cliff dwelling fatigue yet. We were fresh and excited and pretty much blown away by that initial view.
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace |
The tour itself is nice. Sort of. The ranger that led us was a nerdy geologist and he worked hard to try to take us all back in time to when the Cliff Palace was occupied by the Ancient Pueblans.
What happened to the Anasazi? Weren't they the ones who built these ruins? Turns out we don't call them that anymore. I don't know why. Now we call them Ancient Pueblans.
Anyway, our ranger was very nerdy and it didn't feel like he was following a script written by somebody else, which was wonderful. He asked as many questions as he answered, I think, as a way to draw visitors into the mystery of the place.
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace |
If you look closely in the picture above you'll see that there's a young lady dressed as a cat. There were actually two cat girls on this tour. Not only were they dressed like cats, they were totally into the tour. A lot of the kids weren't. That's the uncool part of a guided tour like this, especially one this large. Kids. Some are really into it, and that's fun for everyone. Seeing a place like this through a kid's eyes, that was always one of my favorite aspects of being a father. Watching the cat girls had me smiling at various points during this trip. Rotten kids are a drag to be around, though. Rotten parents are even worse than rotten kids. They always seem to go together though.
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
After the tour I went back to the car to get the big camera. Well, big for me. It's a Rebel T5i, basically an entry-level DSLR by Canon. It's been working magic for me, and I bought an L-series 100-400mm lens for this trip that I hadn't had much of an opportunity to use yet. We'd spotted some cliff dwellings--structures, really--across the canyon and I wanted to have a better look at them through the zoom lens. What we didn't know yet was that we'd be seeing these structures all over the canyons in Mesa Verde. According to the rangers there are hundreds of them in the cliffs of the park. Later on in the trip it got to the point where we weren't sure if we were seeing actual structures or were just imagining things.
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| Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Cliff Canyon |
Our next tour was in the early afternoon at the Balcony House. It was a short drive from the Cliff Palace. Along the way we found a turn out that was near the rim of Cliff Canyon. We stopped and walked down to the rim for a few photos. It's always nice to get off the beaten path, even if it's only briefly. Mesa Verde has more of a touristy feel than any other National Park I've been to. It's absolutely worth a visit, but I prefer the quieter parks that feel a million miles from civilization like Death Valley.
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| Cliff Canyon, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Hemenway House, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Balcony House |
The Balcony house tour is a little more adventurous than the Cliff Palace tour. On this tour visitors climb a thirty-five foot ladder, crawl through a twelve foot tunnel and scale a sixty foot rock face. None of it is all that dangerous for big kids and adults, but I wouldn't take little kids that aren't confident in their own athletic ability or nonathletic old folks. Honestly, there's no harm in missing any of the guided tours. There are unguided tours that get you just as close to the dwellings as the guided tours without the ladders and tunnels and a ranger will probably be present to answer any questions you might have.
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| Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Spruce Tree House |
The Spruce Tree House is a self-guided tour that is a short walk from the parking lot. It's smaller than Balcony House and Cliff Palace, but it's been restored nicely. There's even a kiva that has bee restored and can be entered through a hole in the top. It's not as crowded as the guided tours, which was a big win for me. I'm not cut out for guided tours, I guess.
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| Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
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| Common Raven -- Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
That's pretty much it for our day at Mesa Verde. I highly recommend this as a one or two day stop for anyone travelling through the area. The sights here are pretty darned incredible.
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| Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
Soundtrack:
- The Waterboys -- Fisherman's Blues
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| Mesa Verde National Park, CO |
After the tour I went back to the car to get the big camera. Well, big for me. It's a Rebel T5i, basically an entry-level DSLR by Canon. It's been working magic for me, and I bought an L-series 100-400mm lens for this trip that I hadn't had much of an opportunity to use yet. We'd spotted some cliff dwellings--structures, really--across the canyon and I wanted to have a better look at them through the zoom lens. What we didn't know yet was that we'd be seeing these structures all over the canyons in Mesa Verde. According to the rangers there are hundreds of them in the cliffs of the park. Later on in the trip it got to the point where we weren't sure if we were seeing actual structures or were just imagining things.
While guiding tours at Cliff Palace I always felt a presence and heard the sound of women talking and children laughing, like happy people from the past. But it is crowded.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely a life-affirming vibe to that place. I can only imagine what it would be like to get in tune with it the way it sounds like you did. Awesome.
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