Friday the 29th: Cortez, Colorado
Yesterday, we arrived in the city of Cortez and drove to Mesa Verde National Park to explore the Ancestral Puebloan ruins. It is a fascinating park that allows you to step back in time by more than 1,000 years. We were able to see ancient structures that showed the progression of their society over a 750 year period, from 550 to 1300 AD. We saw the remains of many simple pithouses, small rooms sunk into the ground, all the way to elaborate cliff dwellings constructed of carefully shaped stones, built more than 400 years later. It was amazing to be so close to an ancient culture and to see how those people lived and learned in such a primitive time.

We were able to explore Spruce Tree House up close and even descend into a reconstructed kiva, a Hopi word for ceremonial room (last two images in this grouping).

Square Tower House is another cliff dwelling that we were able to view from a distance. It has one of the tallest surviving towers, with a total of four stories.

Today, we visited Cliff Palace, Balcony House, and Cedar Tree Tower. The only way to see the first two cliff dwellings is to go on a ranger guided tour. So, we began with Cliff Palace, a village of more than 150 rooms. It was amazing to walk around these ancient ruins...to see the masonry up close, to peer inside the storage rooms and ceremonial kivas, to see the smoke residue on the ceilings, to hear how they ground their corn and even how they buried their fellow kinsmen.

Our second ranger guided tour was of Balcony House, another cliff dwelling. This was a more challenging tour, with lots of ladders to climb and incredibly narrow tunnels to crawl through. But, it was well worth it. The remains at this site show one of the last cliff dwellings built in Mesa Verde before the Ancestral Puebloans travaled south into New Mexico and Arizona.

On our way out of the park, we saw Cedar Tree Tower, an example of a tower-kiva complex on the mesa top as opposed to in cliff alcoves.

Tomorrow, we head back into Arizona to go through Monument Valley and explore Canyon de Chelly. Then, on to New Mexico...