Mileage:  67,657

Morefield Campground Mesa Verde National Park, Mesa Verde, Colorado

Today was Sunday.  It was moving day.  We filled with water, emptied our tanks and we were on our way to Mesa Verde.  We decided not to take Highway 550 after all.  GPS wanted us to take 62 to 145.  This is the San Juan Skyway.  We drove up and out of the valley and away from the ranches.  This was a picturesque drive.  The character of the mountains changed with the rise and fall of the road.

There were lovely lakes and mountain streams at ear popping altitudes over 10,000 feet.  There was a persistent nip in the air and the sky was thick with clouds.

The leaves are changing quickly.  We will probably be in Utah when the leaves peak in Colorado!

We passed tiny towns, fishermen in their waders fly-fishing, hawks soaring and lots of deer.

As we approached Mesa Verde, the landscape changed yet again.

We ate lunch and went for a ride to see the park.  We began at the visitor center.  Mesa Verde National Park is dedicated to the preservation of the Ancestral Pueblo people.  Mesa Verde was their home for over 750 years.  There are nearly 5,000 archaeological sites here.  600 of those are cliff dwellings. We purchased tickets for two tours tomorrow.  This is the only way we can actually access the cliff dwellings.

We are staying in the Morefield Campground.

The views of the Montezuma Valley are unbelievable.  It was hard to stop taking pictures…and then it was hard to chose my favorites. 

This is a fire lookout station. Every day, all day from May until the end of September, someone sits in this lookout scanning for wildfires.

Our first glimpse of cliff dwellings.

Today, we drove to Wetherill Mesa.  By the time we arrived, our options for exploring were time limited.  The walking trail to Step House was already closed for the day.  There was a paved multi-use path, so we hopped on our bikes.  We went to the Badger House Community ruins where we learned a little bit about how the earliest inhabitants of this area lived.  In AD 1 the Ancestral Pueblo people were semi-nomadic.  By AD 550 the people began to farm on the tops of the mesa.  The soil there was fertile and the people devised ways to collect water.  This is when the first pithouses were built.

By AD 750 the people lived in single-story villages. 

As time passed, the building techniques became more advanced. The people began to fashion rectangular brick from the stone and they made a crude cement to hold the bricks in place.

Just walking through these age-old remains is awe inspiring.  What a difficult life these families had. 

In AD 1100 multi story villages were designed and then in AD 1200 cliff dwellings were utilized.  By AD 1300 the thousands of people that lived here had migrated.  As with every ancient story…there is a lot of conjecture to fill in all the parts of the story that are not understood. I cannot wait until tomorrow to learn more.

Agave plant with fruit.

We saw a group of 4 large bucks as we entered the campground this evening.