Mesa Verde

What a BUSY day!  We started the morning with a Pancake Breakfast for the birthday boy.  That was a camping treat!  🙂  Then we were off to explore Mesa Verde NP.  And did we!  We started with the Mesa Top Loop Road driving tour  where we were able to see surface dwellings and cliff dwelling overlooks.  Next came the highlights.  The Cliff Palace with the five 8-10 foot ladders on a 100 foot vertical climb and the  and Balcony House with its 32-foot ladder to climb up, 12-foot long tunnel to crawl through, and then a 60-foot open rock face climb with two 10-foot ladders. Did I mention that this was all on a CLIFF?!  The Rangers shared lots of information with us but the bottom line is this – they just don’t know much about people who once lived here.  But we still learned so much – it was fascinating.  And it took ALL day!

We wrapped up the day with birthday cake for the birthday boy.  We will always remember this wonderful day.