Mesa Verde, Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Tuesday, we toured Mesa Verde National Park. The tour turned out to be more interesting than I expected. Not only was the scenery interesting, but so were the cliff dwellings. I urge the visitor to buy tickets to as many individual ruins tours as can be comfortably fit into a day. The National Park rangers were very informative, and each site varies significantly from the others.

The builders and inhabitants of these cliff dwellings lived there during the 1200's, then abruptly left, probably in response to a prolonged drought. Their ancestors lived on the lands on top of the mesa and surrounding areas the preceding 700 years, before moving below the cliffs.

On our way out of town the next day we spent some time walking around Durango. Lunch was a quiet affair sitting on the tailgate of the truck on Coal Mountain Pass. We stopped in Silverton to stretch our legs and have a hot fudge sundae. Returning to Ouray, we made reservations for a jeep tour to Telluride for the following day.

Day eight: Black Bear and Imogene Passes