23 - 24 September 2010
Mid afternoon on 23rd we travelled south east from Mantecello in Utah into the south west corner of Colorado to the Mesa Verde National Park but this time a very different scene, concentrating on the human influence rather then the natural. We stayed over night in a lodge building, small motel type room, and to offset the cost cooked for ourselves on the outside balcony. It saved a lot of travel time and easily enabled us to get to the conducted tour time of 9.30am for the Cliff Palace visit. Other places could be viewed on our own which either could not be directly accessed or had staff present.
The park contains over six hundred sites of construction remnants built out of stone and clay from about AD 750 to AD 1200 at an altitude of approximately 7000 feet ASL.
Cliff Palace is the largest of the cliff settlement dwellings. Recent archeological studies have confirmed there were 150 separate rooms built in the period AD 1190 to AD 1279. In case you are in doubt the photgraph is of the real place not a model.
Present day exit by three similar ladders. Access when lived in is thought to have been by cling toe and hand holds up the sandstone cliffs.
Another less complete site across the canyon.
Hand grain grinding stones. The top loose stones are replicas.
Roof of a Kiva or community room, reconstructed, showing the underside. Above this clay plaster would be laid so the roof area formed part of the ground surface around it and the Kiva was like a pit below the terrace floor.
Open round Kiva is within the people.
There was also wildlife in the park.
...and many visitors.
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