One of the things we were most excited for on this trip--Mesa Verde!! We'd planned a trip in 2020, then postponed since they weren't holding tours during the pandemic, then postponed again when some of the sites were closed for repair--this year all of Wetherill Mesa was still closed, but we decided we really wanted to do this trip while Abigail was still with us.
No makeup, little sleep, but still very happy!
I managed to get tour tickets for both Cliff Palace and Balcony House--hurray!! We started the morning at Cliff Palace.
Truly incredible to be able to walk through it and learn so much about the Ancestral Puebloan people.
I especially loved learning about the kivas and the hole in the floor of each, called a sipapu, that provides a connection with the spirit world.
Our second tour was to Balcony House, and I think this was our unanimous favorite. Cliff Palace is SO spectacular, but in Balcony House you can explore a bit more and that's really fun. I also really enjoyed learning from our guide, who was there as part of a NPS iniative to include more Indigenous people in the parks which hold so much of their history.
To get to Balcony House, you climb this very long ladder and the rungs are HOT.
And there's some squeezing through tunnels!
Incredible to see these timbers which have survived so many centuries.
Here's our guide talking to my dad and Abigail about the kiva structure.
This tunnel was the trickiest one to get through; we had to take our packs off! I think it's maybe 18 inches wide? This is the original access point which is pretty effective at deterring intruders.
More ladders, up over the ancient handholds that the Ancestral Puebloan people used!
And some more squeezing through tunnels!
And more ladders (this is a pretty active tour).
Then we went over to the park visitor's center to watch the film and get Junior Ranger stuff. I loved the "parkitechture" on display here.
After that, we ate lunch and then drove the Clifftop Loop, including a short walk to an overlook of Square Tower House (I didn't even try to get tickets here; I needed 9 and they only allow 10 people per day, and I decided Balcony House would probably be more fun to climb around).
The architecture is just INCREDIBLE!! In a couple of places throughout the cliff dwellings you can still see the original paint that was used 800 years ago.
I didn't take many pictures of the Clifftop Loop, but it's really neat to stop at (all) the waypoints and see how the buildings became increasingly sophisticated. (Our kids were not fans of stopping every 30 seconds, but they learned a lot.)
Close to the end there's a part where you can look across the valley and see Cliff Palace, which is very cool, and then we started looking around and found SO MANY cliff dwellings!! The park actually has over 600 identified cliff dwellings (and 4,700 total archaeological sites). Just incredible.
Then we went back to our campsite and my dad took the kids to get ice cream and gave them what my kids call a "pep talk" (Neil is famous for these, basically it's a "behave yourself" chat) while Neil and I just sat in our chairs and enjoyed the silence. Love these trips, but sometimes it's hard just going going going all the time without any mental space to take a break.
The kids worked on a very cool fort that previous campers had begun building (I love how many campsites they've been able to do this at, I think we always either work on an existing fort or start a new one. I just love thinking of all these little kids working together all summer to build these forts a day here and a day there, never meeting each other, but all united by the same goal!).
And the stars were beautiful, even with the very bright full moon that lit everything up so much that I never bothered with a flashlight. Just incredible and reminded me so much of the night sky silhouetting the mesas at Big Bend.
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