Gotta love the green table!

So if you don't speak Spanish, Mesa Verde means green table. Anyways, last week Katelyn and I headed down to Mesa Verde, which is in southern Colorado, on our way to Manassa, which is where my Grandma lives. They have a big 24th celebration and it pretty much is a family reunion every year. Anyways, I had been to Mesa Verde a couple times and really liked it, so since it was on the way I figured we could leave a day early so that Katelyn could see what it was like. Oh, by the way, the drive through Southern Colorado is AMAZING, I strongly recommend everyone to drive through at some point. In fact...if I can convince Katelyn I might have just found the place I might want to settle down eventually...but on to Mesa Verde.

So funny thing about this picture, it was just the two of us so you'll notice that most of these pictures are of either one of us or the other because one of us had to take the picture. This one was taken with a timer and balanced on my car. It took a couple times though, because it wasn't always balanced the best. Anyways, this picture took literally right after I had run to my place and turned around. You can tell that my left arm is still coming up as the picture was taken.


Our first stop was at the Spruce Tree cliff dwelling. Mesa Verde is the old habitations of the ancestral Pueblo Indians (or native Americans I guess is the politically correct term). It includes a lot of pit houses and other buildings on top of the mesa, but is probably most famous for the cliff dwellings. This one is the biggest dwelling that you don't have to have a ranger guided tour to get to. It wasn't too bad of a hike, especially after what we've done previously this summer.


So this is at one end of the dwelling. The ranger we talked to told us they estimate somewhere from 50-80 people lived here. The living areas are above ground and where you see the ladders are the kivas, which were ceremonial areas, and they are below ground. So I'm not 100% sure why they built these cliff dwellings. They said that there is no evidence of wars or fighting so it wasn't for protection, but it does stay cool down there in the summer and supposedly around 50 degrees in the winter. That might be a reason...but they did all their farming up top and you'll see from some of the other pictures that other cliff dwellings are crazy to get to from the top. Needless to say, these people weren't afraid of heights.


This is one of the entrances to a kiva. There's a whole evolution over the thousand years that these people lived here (they left around 1200-1300 AD) of their dwellings going from pit houses to above ground stone buildings and below ground kivas. Anyways, they were pretty good at what they built. None of the structures have been restored, all that the park workers have done is clear away the rubble. So everything you see is original. Even the wooden poles coming from the buildings are original. Since their in the cliffs they're pretty sheltered from the elements.


This is what's left of the first type of dwellings they had, a pit house. They were dug slightly into the ground and then built up using wooden posts and mud/adobe walls. It's kinda cool, they even had their own ventilation system with the fire places. But it is crazy thinking of what was comparable in Europe around the same time as here. Slightly different I would say...


This is looking down from a cliff to another dwelling. This shows how crazy it must have been to get up from one of these dwellings. There are little holes carved into the stone wall that they used as hand/toe holds. It's pretty intense. Made me wonder what the ladies did while they were pregnant. Probably couldn't go too many places...


This was a way cool overlook. Behind us is the biggest dwelling, called the cliff palace, and all over from the left to the right are different dwellings. You can't see it but there is a crack running right to left where there were a bunch of different dwellings. Again, it's crazy that these people could get to these places, much less build these dwellings.


Here's another view of one of the cliff dwellings. We're going to have to go back when we have more time so that we can go to the ranger guided ones.


This area was different from the others. It was a stone built dwelling that was on the mesa, not in the cliffs. It kinda reminded me of Chichenitza. The only difference is that most of the rooms weren't accessible from the sides. When they originally lived here there were roofs and most of the rooms were entered into from the roof, coming down a ladder like the kiva in the other picture. Kinda different, but cool at the same time.

Here's an overview of one of these dwellings. There are also some underground tunnels connecting some of the rooms. It's crazy because we really don't know that much about these people. Most of what we know comes from studying the current Pueblo Indians, and as these people left 800 years ago things could have changed...anyways it was really cool to be able to see all these structures. Also, there were a lot of engineering features that were pretty amazing for people at that time. Not to mention the fact that these people had to climb down cliffs to go home after working in the fields all day. Kinda crazy.

Anyways, it was a great trip, had a lot of fun and got to see some amazing things. Plus we got to go see family afterwards. Not bad for an extended weekend!