Mesa Verde, Colorado

Well, work has really been cramping my style lately as far as taking photos and catching up on past trips. One of these days, I am going to have to fix that! Anyway, this is part of a road trip I took with a good friend in 2006 from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Mesa Verde, Colorado and then to Sedona, Arizona....this is the Mesa Verde part of that trip. I really had no idea how amazing Mesa Verde would be! The Anasazi built and inhabited these cliff dwellings between 550 to 1300 AD. I visited a lot of National Parks as both a child and an adult, but somehow I had completely missed this one. The ladders on the cliff edges were a bit scary at first. I remember the first one I went up to Cliff Palace was almost 90 degrees straight up, and my body was literally shaking (which didn't help with the fear factor!). After the first ladder though, it was a lot of fun! Talk about an adrenaline rush! Here are a few photos from Mesa Verde.

This was the first ladder leading up to Cliff Palace.

 Cliff Palace

 

 

 Kiva

 High Rooms at Cliff Palace

Long House

There was water and vegetation up here, so the Anazazi could grow vegetables here. The crops were grown up on the mesa tops.

Here I am in one of the cliff dwellings.

When we emerged from our last cliff dwelling, there was a big storm moving in. We still had to get down from the mesa, but we had to stop for photos first.

The photo below shows a very strong hail storm off in the distance. Unfortunately, our hotel was right in the path of this storm.When we arrived back at our hotel, we had to make a run for it because the hail was HUGE and it was falling fast and hard!

Mesa Verde is truly a magical place. It really made me think about how these people lived and how much intelligence and hard work it took to build these amazing dwellings. I wonder what happened to them?