Mesa Verde, Thursday, July 14

Miles and Ethan at the entrance to Mesa Verde.

Miles is in the red shirt and Ethan is in the green shirt at the window of one of the pueblos. The park ranger is standing by the round room.

Everyone on the guys' tour. Miles and Ethan are in from of the middle round room that looks like a kiva.

Look closely. That green dot at the top of the ladder is Ethan, he's followed closely by his PaPere.




This is a picture Miles took from the Cliff Palace. I'm at the top watching them.

Great picture of my two fellows taken by another laggard, a young man from France.

This picture was taken by Ethan. This was one of the items he had to find to earn his Junior Ranger Badge.

Thursday, July 14

We left Durango today around 11:00 am. We weren't in a hurry to get going, so we had breakfast and packed up the car.

Driving to Mesa Verde took a little over an hour. We had to traverse 2 passes of around 9000 feet, with numerous switch-backs. It seems that the roads are smoother and have many more guard rails than it did 20 years ago. Ethan's learning many terms used in traveling in the mountains.

Ethan was excited about Mesa Verde. He remembered the Pueblos that we toured last year in Colorado Springs and looked forward to visiting the largest ruins in Colorado.

We stopped at the visitor's center before having lunch at the Spruce Tree Terrace Cafe. While purchasing our tickets for the Cliff Palace the park ranger asked Ethan if he would like to become a junior park ranger and earn an official badge. Ethan immediately said yes. The ranger gave him a booklet that he had to fill out that had many questions about the foliage, the Pueblo Indians, and the importance of preserving the ruins.

Ethan was so eager to get started on earning his badge. We spent our entire lunch time going through the book and looking for items native to the area. We had the whole booklet finished by the time we got to the museum. We we brought the completed book to the ranger in the museum he mad a big production out of his accomplishment. Finally he offered him the badge, but before he could get it, Ethan had to raise his right hand and take the ranger oath to always uphold the principles and beliefs of the Mesa Verde Park Rangers. I should have gotten a picture of it, but I was so surprised by the little ceremony and Ethan's sincerity that I missed that opportunity completely.

Once we arrived at the ruins of the Cliff Palace and Ethan actually saw the scale of it and the depth that he would have to climb he became a bit apprehensive, but he was determined to be a part of it. I had planned on going down again just as I had done with our children, but when the ranger started talking about the dangers of some of the paths I could see Miles become more worried. He didn't want me going down there even though we had climbed several mountains in Kentucky on paths that had narrow ledges in order to cross a natural bridge. So I decided to let the two guys enjoy it on their own. And they did. They were the very last to leave the ranger and climb the 30 foot ladders to get back up to the top.

We stopped a couple of times after to look at a few other cliff dwellings, but none were as impressive as the Cliff Palace.

We left Mesa Verde to drive to our hotel in Cortez, CO for the night. We were supposed to stay at a local hotel, the White Eagle, but when we got to it I had second thoughts. So here we are tonight at a Best Western in a two room suite. At least this time I didn't make Miles stop at every hotel on the strip. Cell phones are wonderful!