Admiring the paths of people who climbed cliffs and built dwellings using toeholds

Today we headed to Mesa Verde. While there, before we even saw any cliff dwellings, we learned: (a) we should keep wild life wild, (b) we should both bring water and not bring drinks on our walk to the first cliff dwelling we went to, and (c) there's something called Mormon Tea that grows in the area (we thought 2L might enjoy the sign).

Next, we hiked down to Spruce House, and were able to walk around parts of that cliff dwelling. We were tired having walked down a paved path, so we were really impressed with the Anasazi, who apparently got to their houses (and built them, we guessed) by climbing the cliffs using toe-holds that they carved into the mountain. (You can see these in one of the pictures, which has two cliff dwellings with one sort of on top of the other.) We wondered how many Anasazi might have inadvertently gone BASE jumping without a parachute during the process of either building the dwellings or living in them.

In addition to seeing Spruce House up-close, we were also able to see Cliff Palace (the largest cliff dwelling) from a number of vantage points along a drive through the park. We also got to see several other cliff dwellings from afar, and we were amazed at how many there were.




We were less impressed (apologies to the Anasazi who created them) by the pit dwellings that we saw throughout the park. Due, in part, to a sense of bitterness at having walked a trail that took about 20 minutes that lead us just to a pit house (rather than another cliff dwelling view, as we'd expected), we haven't posted any pictures of pit houses. To get an idea of what you're missing, picture a relatively round hole in the ground (which was used for ceremonies, it's speculated by those in the know), next to some small square rooms (with no doors between -- apparently the Anasazi were big enough fans of climbing that they did it even when they weren't living in a cliff dwelling).

In addition to these kinds of dwellings, we saw several funky wild flowers. We have no idea of what these were. In particular, there's a long leafed thing with yellow flowers and pods in the middle. (We have a picture of it with the yellow flowers, and another with the pods.) Anyone who knows what these are, please let us know.



Tonight, we're in Delta, UT, which, according to the front desk guy at the motel here, is in the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow we venture to our bonus park of the trip: Great Basin. (This also gives us our ninth, we think, national park of the trip.)