MESA VERDE

Here you see Deanie and Zach gazing at a cliff dwelling across a small canyon at Mesa Verde National Park (for those of you who have even worse language skills [in anything other than English] than I do, "Mesa Verde" means "Green Table" in Spanish). As at Sand Dunes, in early May, very few visitors come to the park, and the campground couldn't have had more than 1/4 of the spaces taken. We took a very nice hike to the tip of one outcropping of the Mesa which had a beautiful view of the West, North, and East. You could see Cortez, the "Sleeping Ute" mountains, as well as other mountain ranges up to 120 miles away.

We also took a nice 3 mile hike around one of the (I don't know what to call them) outcroppings to see some petroglyphs (actually, they're pictographs - petroglyphs are carvings, pictographs are paintings). On the way, we passed a cave dwelling that the Park Service has made accessible for exploration. Very interesting.

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