Wilderness Wandering

October 19-21

Thursday

We are back in Colorado. The leaves have really turned! 

Mesa Verde is a different type of park. No question it is beautiful, but it isn’t the in your face kind of beauty of Zion and Bryce. And the reason the park exists is to preserve the the cultural significance of the ancient Pueblo ruins there!

Friday

We were up early. We had mule deer visiting us for breakfast. We drove to the south end of the park for our guided tour of Cliff Palace. Cliff Palace was home to about 120 people around 1200 AD. The complex has 150 rooms. It was built under and into a sandstone overhang. The kivas are very interesting. The ones at Mesa Verde are round and dug into the ground. They had an air hole built in above that gave air to the fire in the kiva. The roof was woven and rested on arms that were but into the wall. The roof of the kiva was Level with the ground surrounding it and was strong enough that people could walk across it. There are built in hand and foot holds they had to use to get up to the top where their fields were. We got to use a ladder to get back to the surface.

There are no written records. Only stories passed down. The popular theory on why they moved on from here is that it was due to population growth and an extended drought which caused hunger and possible discord among the people, and so it was time to move on. Many moved south closer to the more reliable water source of the Rio Grande. We truly enjoyed the tour.

The ranger made a point of saying that the people who built these dwellings are not gone. Their ancestors are still here! The National Park Service even does special tours for indigenous people allowing them time in the ruins alone. 

Next we drove The Mesa Top Loop and stopped to tour ruins from other time periods.

We made sandwiches for lunch and toured the history museum. The museum is undergoing extensive renovation. Many of the exhibits while very interesting are very dated. Lastly, we did the moderately strenuous 2.8 mile Petroglyph Point hike to see a cool petroglyph panel. We found the petroglyphs about 2/3 of the way through the hike. We walked the last part of the trail with a couple from West Virginia who have seen well over 100 National Parks, Monuments, Forests, etc. 

The drive to Petrified Forest National Park is fairly long. I asked them if there was anything along the way that we should see. Andy immediately said Hovenweep! He and Becky had been there the day before and they liked it better than Mesa Verde. 

Hovenweep is a National Monument. Like Mesa Verde, it is the site of Puebloan ruins. Many of the ruins have not been excavated yet. They had photos on their phones of the amazing shards of pottery they found on their walks yesterday! Of course, they left the pieces there after they photographed them. They had a four wheel drive vehicle and were able to access some remote areas of the park. 

After the hike, we made our final stop of the day at The Far View Terrace Ruins. As the name implies, more ruins in a different area. There was the remains of a reservoir they had built to capture precious water. Some of the ruins have been excavated and have a building built over them too protected them from the elements.

Saturday

We did the 2.4 mile Knife Edge trail to get a bit of exercise before we made a final stop at the Visitor Center and took our picture with the entrance sign.

Then we headed to The Hovenweep National Monument, about 1 hour away. Even though we don’t have 4WD, we wanted to check out what we could see. 

We drove through some pretty desolate terrain. We saw beautiful wild horses.

We arrived and went to the VC. The ranger was very kind. She noticed Tim’s National Parks pass was looking  quite beat up. She made him a new one while we talked about the Hovenweep site. 

This place has a campground. We decided to drive over and check it out. The campground was lovely! So we decided we would stay here tonight and do some hiking and get to Petrified Forest tomorrow. 

You can access the Rim Trail from the campground. We walked about 2 miles around the rim of a canyon and were able to view about 10 buildings up close. There was a wide variety of shapes and sizes. One of the buildings was roped off as there were park service employees actively preserving part of the building from collapsing. In the distance there is a mesa. It is called Sleeping Ute Mesa. Legend has it that the mesa is a sleeping Ute chief who will come back one day to lead his people. The chief’s head is on the left and his feet on the right.

We went back to the VC to ask the ranger a question about burial customs. She said there are 2 answers. Sometimes the deceased was literally just put in the garbage dump, she called it a “midden”. There have also been some remains recovered that were in a room of a home and the room was just walled off. Pretty interesting.

The ranger noticed me paying special attention to the pottery display. I said I collect pottery. She pulled out two boxes of shards that we were able to pick up and look at! So cool!

We went back to our lovely campsite and chilled. We had Old Fashioneds and a campfire and did a little stargazing.

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise. I did a quick 2-1/2 mile hike on the other trail head from the campground that leads to The Holly site 4 miles away. It was a fun scramble to the floor of the canyon through a very short slot canyon and along a wash at the base. Alas, I didn’t find any pottery shards.

Now off to Petrified Forest NP!