Mesa Verde

We got up early Friday morning, packed up camp and motored over to Mesa Verde for some more views of the cliff dwellings. We had been here before about 2 years ago, but we didn't get to see the Balcony House as it hadn't opened for the season. So this time, we'd check out the Mesa Verde signature dwelling, Cliff Palace, and then head on to the more adventurous Balcony House tour.


Cliff Palace, as seen from above


Jill cheeses for the camera


The tour trickles down towards the ruins


Jill called this the "Jill and Joel wall". She said the left side looked like her work (fast and furious) while the right side looked like my work (slow and meticulous).


The native Americans invented the photo frame many years ago.



The second part of our tour would take us to Balcony House. This dwelling isn't nearly as easily accessed as Cliff Palace. For this dwelling, you have to scale a 35 foot ladder, then squeeze through some narrow rocks for about 10 feet all to later have to crawl through two very small holes to exit. To us, it just added to the fun of it all.


In real estate its location, location, location. The Native Americans knew how to pick em.



After Mesa Verde, we found some showers (hooray!) and then headed into Durango for some lunch. As we ate lunch, a huge thunderstorm blew in which pretty much put a damper on any hiking/biking/rafting things for the afternoon so we hopped in the car and headed east towards Alamosa for the 3rd National Park in a 4 day span. Loads of pics from the Great Sand Dune National Park to come...