Honeymoon Day 4 - Mesa Verde (14 November, 2005)

Today was Mesa Verde - that's Spanish!

Mesa Verde is roughly 35 miles west on US 160 out of Durango, CO. We were lucky to get a pretty early start (8:00am) and we showed up at the front gate of Mesa Verde at about 8:45.

20 miles (1 hour and 10 minutes) later and we were at the ranger station/museum just in the nick of time to take a guided ranger tour - although we might have exceeded the posted speed limit just a bit for the final few miles.

This was a tour of the 'Spruce Tree House' dwellings and was very informative. The park ranger allowed us all the time we wanted (there were roughly 10 of us on the tour) to really see the site. Without the tour, you don't have an opportunity to get right up to the dwellings which are largely inaccessible to anyone who isn't a 13th century Pueblo Indian...or a Park Ranger with climbing equipment.


We also took a hike up the 'Petroglyph Trail' - a 2.8 mile moderately strenuous hike that took us just over two hours, and when we got back to the tour start point there were approximately 35 people on the 1:00 tour which made us feel very good about hustling to catch up to the 10:00 edition.

Laura and I got numerous pictures of both Spruce Tree House and the Cliff Palace, and one place in particular that was very unusual - no visible way of accessing the site - Square Tower House.