Day 3: Mesa Verde

We went to Mesa Verde today, when we were going through the gate Hope asked about a military discount.  The lady wanted to know if Hope was a dependent, Hope said she was a war widow.  The lady started crying, it was a very touching moment.  She thanked Hope for all she and Ryley have done.  It was a sobering start to our day.

Hope, Emma and Tayler

 We went to the visitors center first.  It was a little weird, in the parking lot there were two police cars with lights flashing, parked behind a car and they were searching a couples car, I can't help but wonder what was going on there.  After talking to a couple of park rangers we decided we needed to take a couple of tours.  We went on the Balcony house tour first.  It was supposed to be the most physically challenging tour.

 This ladder was the first thing we did to get to the dwellings.  I'm not sure why but it made me shaky thinking about climbing it :)  But I did it and it was kind of cool.  This is the view from the bottom.

 This is the view from the top

 The Balcony house is called that because it is the only dwelling that still had a balcony, it is pretty cool all the things that the Pueblo Indians were able to do, without our modern technology and knowledge.

Kiva, were Indians held sacred ceremonies

 I remember when I was a little girl we went to Mesa Verde and we went to one of the dwellings where we could climb down into a Kiva, the kids didn't want to go looking for any more dwellings though so we just did our two tours.

 This is the path we had to take to get out of the dwellings.  We had to climb a ladder to this rock staircase.  It was a little scary, but not bad.

 The last ladder and then we will be back to the modern world :)

 Second tour for the day was the Cliff Palace dwelling. Pretty impressive!

 I had to stop myself from just snapping pictures, it was just cool to see and walk right up next to it.

 As you can see Tayler was just super happy, not sure what his deal was but it might have been the heat :)

 After the Cliff Palace tour everyone was hot and tired, so we went to a gift shop and got some lunch also.  It was nice and relaxing.  It started pouring rain, it was good timing two days in a row, as soon as we have been done in two parks it started raining after we were done with everything we wanted to do.  Hopefully that good luck sticks with us :)  We went back to Cortez and just relaxed, it was storming pretty bad so we just stayed in the room.  In the Hotel there was a sign to go to the Cultural center in town and watch some Indian dances.  It was free and close so we decided to go.  It was interesting but after about half hour we decided we were done and went out to dinner.

 These are the dancers that entertained us.  The young girl at the back kind of made me laugh because she was laughing through the whole thing.  I just thought that was funny.  It looked like her and I think it was her Mom talked through the whole thing.  I was glad it was free.

It was a great day, it was fun to make it back to Mesa Verde again.  I laughed and told the kid's that maybe I could go there again in another 32 years :)  I would be really old, wonder if I would want to do the Balcony house tour at 72.......hhhmmm food for thought.