Mesa Verde

Since we had a big day planned, we needed to leave Farmington bright and early for Mesa Verde. We had tickets to tour the Cliff Palace and needed to do it in 2 shifts since both Deborah and I needed to borrow a backpack from Janell.  Lots of small ones on this trip!  We arrived with plenty of time and the kids were excellent travelers today!
This is Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in America. Pretty dang cool! Dates of the buildings start at 1190-1260. Our guide says that 75% of the buildings remaining are original. This is where we joined up with our tour group before heading down:

Look...A Pueblo Indian! Adam is displaying the tribe very well:

original "hand-holds" for climbing:

Up four ladders to the top.  Thank goodness we had baby backpacks! Tight squeeze:

And to think there are over 600 dwellings known in this area!

After the tour we had a picnic in the park with the whole group and then drove a small loop looking for windows in the cliffs. We spotted quite a few but were happy to have these displays showing some of their locations.  So cool!
ps. Nobody really knows why the Indians left the dwellings. One theory (that I like to believe) is the Indians have always been taught to be wanderers. I guess they just realized it was time to move on to another area. Another theory is that the weather was too harsh and resulted in drought= no food.  Either way, I think its fascinating they've lasted this long for us to see!

Next stop....DURANGO!

Here are pics of the drive along the way. It was such a gorgeous drive! Dessert, rocky land leading into beautiful lush mountains.  Amazing!
Storm brewing over the mesa.  See Ship rock in the faint distance?