Mesa Verde National Park

    We were all looking forward to a visit to Mesa Verde National Park. It was great to finally cross into Colorado and leave the deserts of Utah behind. By the time we got to the visitor center the line for guided tours was quite long and me missed out them. We instead chose a few stops in the park where you could walk among the ruins of the cliff dwellings and see others from across the canyons.

    Our first stop was a short, one-mile walk down from the top of the mesa into a partially excavated cliff dwelling. We got to see the remains of houses, meeting places, and food storage buildings. It was all really neat how they built everything with sandstone blocks and wood.

    After our walk the kids completed a junior ranger activity about the cliff dwellings and they all earned a badge to wear for the rest of the trip. We then drove to the most impressive dwelling and got to enjoy it from an overlook. A couple of more stops followed and then we made the long, winding drive off of the mesa and out of the park. It was definitely a change from all of the geologic wonders we had been seeing in Utah.