Goal #56: Mesa Verde part 2

On Day 2 of our trip to Mesa Verde we toured both Balcony House and Cliff Palace on guided tours, as well as checked out numerous overlooks, a self-guided cliff dwelling and took a two hour hike.  This was a long, but satisfying day where we made our campfire dinner of turkey burgers and roasted corn at about 10pm.

Balcony House was the most adventurous dwelling to get to.
We had to climb a 32-foot ladder to reach it, then we crawled through a 12-foot tunnel to get to the exit.

You could still see the organic material between layers of stone and wood on the balcony’s of the cliff dwellings.
Well preserved walls, very straight windows and doors, and a cool balcony.
Grinding corn and climbing out of the tunnel at Balcony House
Before the Ancestral Puebloans built their cliff dwellings, they lived in pit houses, like the reproduction below.
The pit houses were the precursors to the development of the Kiva.
(Right) To leave Balcony House, we climbed up footholds in the rocks, just like the Ancient Puebloans.
Luckily, the Park Service had widened these steps and added chain rails.
Cliff Palace as seen from an overlook.
In the photo below you can see the actual footholes in the rocks that the Ancestral Puebloans used to climb from the bottom level to the top.
There would have been a ladder as well.
To see these petroglyphs, we hiked 2.5 miles round trip.
And why not stop and try to do a handstand at an overlook?  Actually, I CANNOT do a handstand, but I can attempt a cartwheel that gets
my legs straight enough for a picture :)
For our final tour, we joined a special group to see Cliff Palace at twilight.  Our tour was lead by a ranger in character, playing Lucy Peabody in 1909.  Lucy was instrumental in getting Mesa Verde declared a National Park by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and put under Federal Government protection.