Getting back in the area where we started what seems like long ago. We stayed at Far View Lodge in Mes Verda Park
Mesa Verda is a beautiful high plateau – over 8500 feet.
Many first nations people lived here in the period 800 ad. – 1300 ad. There are over 4800 archaeological ruins in this national park. Driving with views of mountains and the plains, we saw many!
https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm
There were pit houses (800 AD), pueblo houses (900 – 1000 AD). There were multistoryed pueblo houses (1000-1100 AD). And then some of the people moved into cliff dwellings. They are not sure why. But ca. 1200 AD., these cliff dwellings were built, into the cliffs. Was it the drought, that made it more attractive to live in the cliffs, where the water seeped down through the sandstone, and then flowed horizontally when it made shale, that was too hrd to seep through? Was there hostility between the tribes, that motivated some to live in the cliffs, where it was very difficult to approach them without being seen? Nobody knows. But only 100 years after these amazing cliff dwellings were built, they were abandoned. Why? We may never know.
The next morning, Barb went on a guided tour of the Balcony House, (very good – for only 4 dollars!?) while Kathi finished the expensive and not very good breakfast at the FAR VIEW LODGE (excellent rooms, bad service, ugly food and coffee that resembled dishwater more than coffee). Our lesson must be “Stay at the parks – but don’t eat there!”.
We drove to the informative Mesa Verda museum, peeked at the Spruce House (it is closed for visitors, the cliffs are very instable and maybe it will never open again). We drove around to the various sites on the Mesa Verda Top Loop. Pit houses, Pueblo villages, the four storey Tower House nested in the cliffs and the Far View Site. Quite amazing to think of the building techniques, and the none existing scaffolding, little water supply, tools that were not bought at the local hardware store.
While we drove from ruin to ruin, the mountains that were dressed in white snow stood up from the flat orange and a green plains to the clear blue sky.
The sun was strong and shade was welcome. The trees that had once been tall and strong were now naked black skeletons. Two thirds of the forest has been destroyed in fires caused by lightening.
We drove towards Durango and stopped at the good but very closed bakery cafe in Mancos and ended up in the Millers Inn for a BLT sandwich. Tired, we faced Durango, traffic, supermarket. We realized how much more we felt at home in the nature than in the big city. A bit frazzled, we drove down to Farmington, our new B+B Silver Adobe Inn. Nice place on the San Juan River, that flows with 50 % of the ground coverage from the mountains in the area. It joins with the Colorado River, and used to flow into the Cortez Sea, by Baja California. But now, because of the resource use, the Colorado River dribbles into the sand 80 km. from its earlier delta. The other river, “Rio Grande” takes the other half of the drainage, and flows to the Gulf of Mexico.
http://www.moabdreaminn.com/
We had really looked forward to Sasha joining us. But Air Canada changed the flight time from 7:45 to 6:00 am., from Kamloops to Calgary – the first of three legs of Sashas trip. We were supposed to meet her this afternoon in Durango, and now Sasha will land 11:45 pm.! Stupid Air Canada for not letting their passengers know. So plans changed, and we look forward to seeing Sasha tonight about 00:30 am!
Kathi made a great pasta dish, all ready for a salad for tomorrow, when CHACO – a cultural Legacy will be taken in. We crashed and Sasha arrived at 1 PM after a long and frustrating travel day. WELCOME TO SASHA!
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