Today’s exciting adventure took us back to Colorado. Mesa Verde National Park is home to thousands of ancient Pueblo archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. I’ve always had an interest in Native American history, so I was excited to check the place out. They call it Mesa Verde, but this time of year, Mesa Marrón would be more appropriate, since much of the foliage has fallen off the trees.

Most of the cliff dwellings can only be seen from a distance. The park offers tours of three or four of the cliff sites, but today all were unavailable except one. Lucky for us, the “Most Adventurous” tour of the “Balcony House” was open. The description warned that the one-hour tour was “strenuous” and involved climbing a 32-foot ladder, crawling through a 12-foot-long 18-inch-wide tunnel, and scaling the cliff side while holding onto chains attached to the wall of rock. Very intimidating :-). Obviously, we signed up. At $4 a person, it was a bargain!

The tour was led by a very quirky ranger named Margaret who was very entertaining in her dry delivery of bad jokes. It was amazing to see the Balcony House up close and imagine what it was like to actually live there. The place was very cozy and protected from the canyon winds. It was built around the year 1200 and at one point contained 40 rooms. Some of the houses had evidence of geometric patterns painted on the walls in red and white. The doors were all high above the floor, accessed only by ladders back in the day. The Pueblo people must have been small in stature since the doors, tunnels, and rooms were very tiny. Let’s let Billy take us through the tour.

We accessed the dwelling by climbing a 32-foot wide ladder. This is Billy at the top! Way to go, Billy!

Once we were in the alcove, we could see glimpses of the architecture through a small window. The bricks are made of sandstone and are held together with mud plaster.

We needed to climb a very narrow flight of sandstone stairs in a dark, tight corridor. Here Billy is happily emerging.

This is a view of the courtyard. The 12-foot hole in the foreground is called a kiva. It was dug out of solid sandstone and lined with bricks. Archaeologists think it had spiritual and/or cold weather lodging purposes.

This is a better look at the kiva. The little hole in the floor is called a sipapu. It is a representation of the ancient Pueblo’s emergence from the underworld.

This is the extremely narrow tunnel we had to crawl through to exit the dwelling. Interestingly, this is what the ancient Pueblos used to enter and exit the dwelling.

After the tunnel, we were subjected to another ladder climb. This time on the sheer rock face. You can get an idea of how high up we are in this photo of Billy reaching the top of the ladder. But the best was yet to come!

The adventure’s grand finale was a climb up the sheer rock cliff face. The footholds you see here are typical of the Pueblo dwellings. They used them daily to come and go from the alcove. But they didn’t have chains and safety fences! The key to doing this was avoiding looking down.

Once the tour was over we checked out a bunch of overlooks and remains of villages on the mesa top. They were not nearly as cool as the cliff houses. Overall, it was an awesome glimpse into history and something fun and different to do. If you visit the park, be sure to sign up for one or more tours!

Tomorrow we head to Moab to check out the other section of the Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point State Park. Ciao for now!

The Square Tower House dwelling