Wednesday's Visit to Mesa Verde National Park

To all the doubters that Colter and Maryn actually did write this blog……here is proof that it's NOT Linda doing the blog….it's US!

On Wednesday we went to Mese Verde National Park. The drive up there was beautiful with all of the super positioning and stratification. About 75% of the landscape was burned from a forest fire. When they have lightning storms, the mountains and plateaus are so high up that it is very common for lightning to strike. We then explored around and saw many kivas, pit houses, Pueblos and lots of cliff dwellings. We stopped for a fantastic picnic lunch and then continued our journey to Balcony House.

At Balcony House we had to climb a 32 foot ladder up to the cliff dwelling! It seemed to really scary at first, but the climb up was not so bad. We had to squirm through tight passageways, climb up small ladders to explore the dwelling. Halfway through our journey in the Balcony House a giant lightning storm swooped in unexpectedly. Toward the end our the tour we had to climb up this quite narrow sandstone staircase! If we fell off, it was about a 40 foot drop on either side! We had to walk up quickly so we wouldn't get caught in the rainstorm. At the top we ran to the car and jumped in!

Then we headed off towards Cliff Palace. We had to stay in the car because the lightning was too dangerous. We got a great look at Cliff Palace, but we didn't want to risk getting hit by lightning.

It was amazing to see these ancient homes. These Puebloans were very smart to build their homes in the caves for they had protection from the elements, wild animals and other tribes.