Mesa Verde, and Cortez

My favorite part of the state, by far, was our trip to Mesa Verde. I have been wanting to go there since I was a kid, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. Mesa Verde is one of, if not the, largest collections of primitive people’s cliff dwellings in the world, spanning a massive canyon, and are built with outposts on either side, many directly into the cliff faces, with outposts and trails running through all of them. The Mesa Verde national Park includes over 5000 sites, 600 cliff dwellings, and occupies around 52,000 acres. The name, Mesa Verde is Spanish for “Green Table” and is aptly named for the trees that seem to cling to the flat surface of the table-top shaped mountains; Mesas. The people that lived there are likely direct ancestors to the southern pueblo peoples of neighboring Arizona. They share much of the same customs and architecture. The native peoples who lived in the structures were also known to climb in and out of the dwellings by footholds, and very well could have been the world’s first rock climbers. We got lucky enough to get a tour through the largest of these dwellings, Cliff Palace. I could not take or post enough pictures. Just imagine, long ago, dark nights and a chilled desert air, coming upon the noises of people, seemingly erupting from beneath the earth, then seeing the lights from inside the cliffs, like sprites dancing on the walls, and just imagine the view from living inside those cliffs.  


































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