Vandrea Does America: Day 87 (Saturday 9/15/12)- Mesa Verde, CO

There is no fair way to compare Aztec Ruins Park and Mesa Verde, though both were left by ancestral Puebloan people and are close enough to each other that we visited them in consecutive days. One obvious difference is that the Aztec Ruins are atop a plain, far from hills and cliffs, while Mesa Verde was built into them. As you can imagine Mesa Verde required more physical effort to appreciate.

The Pubeloan people of Mesa Verde began living in the area around 550 A.D. The majority of the time they resided on top of the cliffs, but in an effort to preserve space for crops and to protect themselves from other tribes they moved into cliff dwellings in the 1190's and stayed there until their exodus in the late 1200's. Like the Aztec Ruins the reason for the tribes leaving is unknown, but widely speculated to be due to multiple factors including a reduction of natural resources and a significant drought.

Several different Ranger led hikes are available at Mesa Verde. We chose two of the most popular, the Cliff Palace tour and the Balcony House tour. They are two completely different experiences. Balcony House is the better of the two.

The shy creature who was our first tour Ranger brought little personality with her or, for that matter, very interesting information. Thankfully the ruins spoke for themselves. Cliff Palace is not only the largest structure in Mesa Verde but of all cliff dwellings in North America and at one time housed up to an estimated 120 people. It has over 150 rooms and 21 Kivas (spiritual "living rooms"). In contrast the Balcony House has 40 rooms and is considered a medium sized structure.

To enter the Balcony House we followed the second much more knowledgeable and charismatic Ranger up a 32-foot ladder. My ascent might have set records as the man behind me was, with each step, trying to headbutt me and by that I mean his head was dangerously near my butt. His hands were also underneath my feet, but instead of say, not placing them there and slowing his pace, he instead shouted repeatedly "don't step on my hand." With this exception the tour group this time around was a much more likable cast.

When describing the possible circumstances behind the group leaving Mesa Verde the ranger asked us about how people historically interpreted misfortune. He anticipated an ensuing discussion about how people see God's involvement in their lives and when something bad happens they see it as a sign, in this case, when a drought comes God is telling the ancestral people to move. But when he asked "And who do we blame everything on?" the answer he got was "Bush." Seeing the Ranger at a loss, but trying to carry on, made us all laugh much harder.

Going off of bad information from the Internet we had hoped to spend the night at the Walmart in the neighboring town of Cortez. When this did not pan out we got away with camping on the street outside the Safeway, though this type of sleeping arrangement never lends itself well to a good night's sleep. You might think a Christian band playing in an adjacent park would help send us into sleep, but the band was more loud than boring. We were left to wonder, as the night grew long, whether the religious group was strangely angry or the aggressive techno rock was strangely religious. At any rate it was horrible.