We began the day and Utah, but soon reached our adventure for the day: Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Here we saw many homes and villages that were built by the Pueblo people known as Anasazi. The park is probably best known for its cliff dwellings. The Anasazi built their homes and villages in the cliffs of the rocks. We are still shocked by how the Anasazi lived in the cliff dwellings. To try to put it in perspective, we drove our car for about 30 minutes uphill to arrive at the dwelling sites! The cliffs are high up on the mountains (difficult to reach by car much less by foot)!
Mesa Verde National Park — Putting our National Parks Pass to good use!
Colorado has fantastic views of snow capped mountains
800 years ago, Anasazi Native Americans built their homes in the side of caves
The overhang of the cliff has protected this structure from the elements and preserved it amazingly well.
Another view of one of the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park
Another of the intricate peublos built into the side of a cliff.
It looks like a minature model, but it’s actually several hundred yards away.
Nap time — Katie caught Dan off-guard with this picture.
On a side note, we stopped to look at the stars while driving at night. We were out in the middle of nowhere driving between towns. We had never seen so many stars. In fact, the area was so devoid of light that we could actually see the haze of the Milky Way Galaxy. We couldn’t capture it with our camera, but it looked something like this (thanks to cgullworld.blogspot.com for the picture).
Milky Way
We LOVE your blogs! Bob and I feel that we’re traveling west with you. I’m so glad that you went the Utah route and got to see Mesa Verde, Arches, and the Anasazi ruins. Keep sending your messages and those amazing, beautiful pictures. We love you both!
Bob and Vada
PS. Have you been asked the question, “Green or red?”yet?
Golly…those pictures of the miniature homes… I was just thinking they looked so miniature..and then your picture stated how it was only a hundred feet or so away….we had some amazing people in our country back in the day!
LOL…Katie for snagging that picture of Dan sleeping! Dan…you gotta get her back