Mesa Verde National Park

I wanted to see this place last year but we were forced to drive by as the timing was wrong. That happens when you’re a traveler and you have places to go, but this year was the occasion for my first visit to this park, the scene of Nevada Barr’s first novel in the National Parks mystery series. 

I found Mesa Verde to be slightly off kilter which was funny. We met just one parks employee and that was at the entrance and she was exactly right for the job cheerful and informative and who waved us on our way into a park devoid of visible employees. After that stop  the entire park was ours, shared with just a few hundred other civilian tourists. 

The campground at Morefield is run by a concession in the park and at $38 a night for dry camping (no hook ups) we preferred our free wild camp 15 minutes from Mesa Verde. However $2:50 each for a long hot shower we could afford and thoroughly enjoyed. 

The national park is a strange place with lots of road and not much to see, which sounds odd but bear with me. There was an overlook but it faced the wrong way so we drove a bit further and found a pull out and made that our spot for lunch with a view, which view was I think is Montezuma Canyon but it wasn’t labeled so I am giving it an inspired guess. 

That overlook, the one facing the wrong way overlooking a uniform high desert plain, was also annoyingly built at an angle so that wasn’t going to work either  for us even just to park GANNET2. Layne is very tolerant of tilted parking but this was too much. Our muffuletta sandwiches made by Layne, would have slid off the plate such was the angle. The overlook did have a pit toilet (which served as a dump station for us on the way out) and there was a trash can which was nice as we always have garbage to dump, but we didn’t stop there on our way into the park.  So we stopped here, narrow but level: 

With some nature out the sliding door it wasn’t a bad spot. 

Making do in Mesa Verde National Park! Some other cars also stopped briefly to look out over the spectacular canyon invisible from the overlook. 

Here’s some actual scenery out by the cliff dwellings miles from the entrance. A canyon offered a scenic view at last:

Mesa Verde exists to protect the cliff pueblos left by the local residents of a thousand years ago. The shortest tour takes I think five hours and we were pondering our options for such a long tour  but even from a distance the buildings show masonry ability. There is a kennel in the park but we have forgotten to get Rusty’s kennel cough vaccination which is usually s requirement and he doesn’t have a county ID tag  as he has no home county… so no tour this visit. 

Apparently after living and farming on the surface the ancient residents  went to living below the rim in villages of many sizes where the largest community consisted of 150 rooms, beautifully built too. My telephoto lens helps make up for the lack of touring up close. These buildings can be seen online too obviously. 

It seems the Anasazi (“Old enemies” in Navajo apparently) arrived around 600 AD and they moved under the cliffs in 1100 and disappeared from the area around 1300 for reasons unknown. That’s the story, been there did that and vanished. It is highly unsatisfactory as one wants to know more obviously and there is nothing to know. 

We saw more people and more cars in the park than we have seen for days camping in the wilderness and dropping into small towns.  I enjoy these walks through park attractions as everyone else seems as pleased as I am to be there. 

Up above is the remains of a forest fire. There have been a few in the park and they are all labeled with a name and a date. 

And there it is, Mesa Verde, a long drive across the mesa to ponder how people managed to thrive living such constricted lives. If you think you might fancy cliff house dwelling imagine how you might do in a Manhattan walk up. All I could think was how did they walk their dogs?

Once you’ve seen the cliff houses it’s 15 miles back to the entrance at 25 miles an hour. It’s a pleasant drive but the scenery is mediocre oddly enough when you compare it to the world outside the park, full of canyons, buttes, buttresses and wilderness. Mess Verde looked like a quiet well run plateau of scrubby piñon trees to be found anywhere across the southwest. 

It’s not ugly but it’s an odd circular drive lacking visual drama. Maybe  I should have looked harder but I couldn’t see anything beyond the pueblos and I suppose they were enough. 

And here’s how they lived before they took to the cliffs: 

When they arrived in the area the cliff dwellers started out living in pit houses part underground, like this: 

I liked the kid playing with the dog and I was quite surprised to imagine dogs might have lived indoors. I like these people. 

Repaving causes traffic jams. I had pulled over plenty of times to let them by in their fast cars and here they were again! I’m glad the park is maintaining the roads so there were no complaints from me about the delay. I like smooth pavement.  

Well that’s another park visited. I think I need to come back in the Fall  and take the tour, or press on to South America. Next time I’ll need to see the cliff dwellings up close.