Blogs from Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, United States, North America

Wednesday 15/08/12 – We rolled out of bed, into some clothes and then into the car for the trip to the airport. The sun was just coming up which made the trip out of the city more interesting. After waving goodbye to Andrew, we headed into our first (of many) brushes with the American airport security system. We had to go through the usual metal detectors and ticket checks before having to remove our shoes and walk through their full-body X-ray machines. We booked our flight from Denver to New York via Dallas Texas as it was $150 pp cheaper. The first of our flights went fine but the flight from Dallas to New York turned into a bit of a production. A lightning storm was sitting over the city which meant that the plane went ... read more

At first glance, the Southwestern deserts seem like the worst place on the continent to settle: hot in summer, cold in winter, and incredibly dry. In reality, several ancient tribes set up remarkably sophisticated civilizations here. They developed the large scale social organizations needed to build large scale irrigation works, plus remarkable stone settlements. Their remains now cover the region, haunting reminders of ancient humanity. The dry environment ensures that all is remarkably well preserved. I plan to see many of these sites over the next month. Cortez sits near one of the most famous. A long low sandstone mesa rises south and west of town. It’s covered in pine trees. From a distance, the mesa ... read more

Since learning as a kid that the Anasazi suddenly disappeard from Mesa Verde - and seeing the classic cliff dwelling photos from there - I've been dying to go there. Somehow in other SW trips I'd never been close enough to visit, so coming here was one of the big anticipations of the trip. It started unexpectedly - climbing 3,000 (?) feet or so along a seemingly endless road w/ steep drop-offs. I hate driving roads like that!!!! :( (how do you make an EEK! face?) :) If I hadn't really wanted to see the dwellings in person, I might have turned around! There are a LOT of cliff dwellings and mesa top pueblo-ish dwellings at MV. The number is astonishing, especially after the remoteness of the desert I'd been traveling through previously. Many thousands of ... read more

September 6-8: Why do we make the choices we make? Sometimes by logic, perhaps more often by “feel”. Sometimes our lives are fairly routine and there seem to be few choices to ponder beyond the groceries. On this trip we're making choices constantly, such is the butterfly life. In 1960, when I was 12, our whole family piled in the blue Dodge sedan and off we went to California! (from Massachusetts, that is from the east coast to the west coast of the USA) I had little idea of what this would mean when I was first fighting for the place I wanted in the back seat, but over the next THREE weeks (I kid you not) our family travelled about 10,000 miles and names like Kansas and Yellowstone and Disneyland and Crater Lake materialized from ... read more

Showed up at Mesa Verde on July 3rd. Not a good visit. Dual total battery failures on the RV during the night. That sent me to Cortez on the 4th of July looking for batteries. There is only one place in Cortes to purchase deep cycle batteries on the 4th. Wal-Mart. I was attempting to have a Wal-Mart free vacation. Other than the battery purchase, I did have a Wal-Mart free trip. The lesson here is to load-test the batteries before a long trip. The Junior Ranger Badge was the best thing that happened at Mesa Verde this year. ( Well, they did fix the conflicting signs).... read more