Mesa Verde National Park via Durango

We had a nice time driving from Rocky Mountain NP toward Mesa Verde NP. We stopped in Leadville, CO to get coffee and walk around. It was a really cool little town with awesome views of the mountains. We popped into Melanzana, which was a hiking clothes store. All of the clothes were made right in the store! We spent a rainy night at West Fork Campground in the San Juan National Forest.

In the morning, we continued on to Durango. We’d been looking forward to Durango for some time. Eddie had ordered new glasses and sunglasses right before we left Somerville. Note the right before we left part… the sunglasses weren’t going to be ready for about a week after we’d already left for the trip. So, we looked into mail holding via the Post Office. Durango would be the biggest city we’d be passing through where the timing worked out for a shipment to be waiting for us. It worked out beautifully. We were also going to ship home some items that we haven’t yet used, but couldn’t part with them just yet. We’ll use those yoga mats and skateboard yet! After walking around, grabbing lunch at a brewery, and promising to be back someday, we headed onward to Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde was included in the first list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978. There are over 600 Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings in the park boundary. We had the opportunity to explore two of these – Cliff Palace and Balcony House. It was amazing to walk through something built so long ago. The ranger who gave the balcony house tour was very interesting. You could tell he is very much into Native American culture and history, and his energy really drove home the fact that this is a really special place rooted in a history that unfortunately not a lot of us know. We also hiked to some petroglyphs, which were also just as special and interesting to view.