Mesa Verde

We finally left Eagle Nest, New Mexico and are heading toward the Grand Canyon. We stopped off in Dolores, Colorado for a week or so to do more exploring in American History. First, we spent the day at Mesa Verde, which has to be one of the coolest places on earth! If you have never been there, it is a must see. There are literally hundreds of dwellings hidden in cliffs and they believe there are more undiscovered. There was so much mystery surrounding the first Indians who lived here around 1,400 years ago, but they now believe they are the ancestors to the Pueblo Indians, who now reside all in the Southwest. Some of the very same ancestors of the Pueblos we visited in Taos! It seems that at different times through out history there would be a group of Indians live there for a few hundred years, then they would move on and another group would come and stay. Sometime in the 1200s the Indians left permanently and left a wealth of artifacts behind that told how they lived, what they ate, a lot about their daily lives, but no clue as to why they up and left. The Indians left so many artifacts that (Mesa Verde National Park) after filling the museum and storing a lot and giving some to other museums around the Nation, they still have more that are just "out there", still in the dwellings. They don't have a place to put them all, so they just leave them!
The dwellings are amazing! The original wood beams are still there holding up the clay structure. You can see that they painted and decorated the walls of their homes with intricate designs and hand prints. There are many kivas that you can climb down into. A kiva is a place of worship used by individual families, it is also a "gathering" place where women may weave or make jewelry. You can see the stone mill where women would grind corn. You can see where they would sharpen their tools and start fires. Fire marks are still on the ceiling of the caves! It's like stepping back into time. Hand and finger prints still in the mortar from them building their home. It's amazing!
Our Jr. Rangers earned another badge after exploring the cliff dwellings and going through the museum, watching a film and taking a test. Auby really loves this, he takes it very seriously and has a great respect for the Rangers. I believe that Samantha likes it too, but won't admit it. She has a pass port that she can stamp at the National Parks, but she still goes through the Jr. Ranger program to get a badge and it is part of our schooling.
This weekend we will be riding through the San Jaun Mountains on a 1800s, coal-fired, steam-powered train, so check back with us for our next adventure!