6/13/08 Mesa Verde National Park

Today we started the morning at the Triangle Cafe in Bloomfield, NM. We were instantly sold on the signage - a giant pie and cup of coffee. They served up a giant hearty breakfast and the service was great. We actually made lunch from the leftovers. Next to us sat an early morning hunting party of mostly Native American men. They were planning a big hunt somewhere in the area.

The majority of the day was spent seeing sites at Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is very similar to Chaco Culture in that visitors basically walk through and observe Ancestral Puebloan ruins. The main difference is that Mesa Verde is much more accessible, therefore the crowds are much larger. Still, the park offered an amazing display of ancient ruins presented by outstanding park rangers. I can not overstate this - a good park ranger can enhance a national park experience like nothing else.

At Mesa Verde we took two guided tours: Balcony House and Cliff Palace. Balcony House was as fun as it was interesting (included steep stairs, traditional ladders, and awesome sites). Angela and I decided that the tour guide was pretty much Mr. Rogers, had he become a park ranger. He even had a sweater with pads near the elbows. If he would have changed his shoes before the tour, I think I would have asked for an autograph, but all I got was a photo. There was even a pictograph at the end (pictographs are painted - petroglyphs are carved).




The Cliff Palace tour was equally interesting, led by a ranger from Houston (said he was kicked out of college) who had recently married his park ranger wife. They now both work at Mesa Verde (ahhhhhhh).





The last site visited in the park was a self-guided tour of Spruce Tree House. The coolest thing about this site was that we were able to crawl down into a Kiva - a round dug out room, then covered for privacy, used for ceremonial events in these Ancestral Puebloan structures. It's a big deal that we were able to go down there.






We left the park and made our way towards Buckskin Gulch, a slot canyon in Arizona. On the way we stopped at Four Corners, where visitors can simultaneously be in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. The site is either near or on an Native American reservation, so there were many vendors of Native American crafts. I bought a small piece of stone for $1. On it was a child's drawing of a snake and the words "Four Corners".




On the way to the slot canyon Angela took a really cool photo of a guy on a motorcycle. He appeared out of nowhere in my rear-view mirror, draped in a skull mask. I thought I was hallucinating then looked up again and said, "Get the camera!"