Summer Road Trip Days 3-4 (Mesa Verde)

Andy was pleasantly surprised to find that Mesa Verde was in the mountains. I guess he had this picture in his head of it being a desert in the middle of nowhere like Chaco was, so when I said we were going to camp there for a couple of nights he was not super excited.

I took the picture below with my phone, so it's kind of blurry. They had told us there were bears in the area so we had to keep all our stuff in our bear box/car. Our bear box was directly behind our tent (like 12 inches away), so when we heard rustling in the bushes back there I was a little nervous. Luckily it turned out to be a deer!

At Mesa Verde they have a few hikes you can do on your own, as well as some overlooks and things you can visit. If you want to actually go to the best cliff houses and wander through them you have purchase tour tickets. They have three tours you can do: Balcony House, Cliff Palace, and Long House. They say if you are afraid of heights, or if your kids can't do ladders on their own, or if you have any other concerns about it you should NOT go. We decided to do all three. For the Balcony House one we decided to bring the hiking backpack because it has a 32 foot ladder and we weren't sure about Colby doing that himself without falling. The other kids did GREAT!

The ladder was side by side so two people could go at once. We sent Kylee up with a lady in front of us that didn't have a pair, and then Skyler went up beside Andy and Colby, and Ally went up beside me. I was a smidge nervous that we couldn't just go right behind our little kids on the same ladder, but it turned out fine. Colby was definitely nervous on this one. He could turn around and look out over the canyon, and he was worried. Skyler apparently ended up hitting his leg pretty hard on one of the rungs and got a huge bruise, but to his credit he didn't cry, and just kept his focus on climbing because we'd told him he had to be super careful and pay attention to what he was doing.

Once we got to the top of the ladder we let Colby get out and explore. They had a few more ladders to climb, which the kids LOVED.

While I understand the appeal to living on the side of a cliff (protected from elements, harder for enemies to get to you, etc.)...I'm not sure I quite comprehend HOW they did it! We went down some pretty steep metal stairs that had been attached to the cliff to get here. They showed us where the hand and toe holds had been carved into the side of the cliff by the ancient people. I just can't imagine being a mother of small children. How did they get them down and up the cliff? How did they keep them from falling over the edge when they were playing? It just seems so dangerous! It makes me wonder how many people lost their lives here. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they were amazing climbers and it was perfectly safe to them. But yikes.

The balcony in the photo below is original! The wood, the hay-like grassy stuff, etc. was all still there. This is so far under the cliff that the elements over hundreds of years have not been able to destroy it. I just think that is awesome.

To get out of Balcony House you had to crawl through a tunnel that was pretty small! I'm not a huge person, and it was squishy for me. The kids of course thought it was super awesome.

After the tunnel you had to climb up a couple more huge ladders, so we made Colby go back into the backpack.

They also had quite a few of these pit houses that have been excavated. These apparently pre-date the move to the cliff houses. The people used to live on top of the cliffs in these, and then they moved down into the houses they built in the cliffs.

It's mindblowing to me how many there are, and where they are. Like every crevice they could possibly find, they built a wall up and used it as a house. But how did they get IN there?!? If you haven't been to Mesa Verde it's hard to get the concept from these photos. Like most of these houses aren't near the ground. They're like 400-600 feet up the side of the canyon wall, and about 40-50 feet below the rim of the canyon. Also, they put soooo much work into building these, but then it's estimated that they only lived here for about 100 years or less. Crazy!

When we went to Cliff Palace we decided to let Colby do it all on his own. We got some looks and comments, for sure. When the ranger was giving us her speech at the beginning about "we have to rescue people every day in the park; kids need to be able to do all ladders on their own; blah, blah, blah" people's heads were all turning in our direction. But Colby was loudly exclaiming, "I BIG ladder! I BIG ladder!" We knew he could do it, so we ignored the looks! As we started hiking down the trail one older guy said, "Sooo...how old IS he?" We were like, "Yeah, he's two. But he really wants to do it. He LOVES ladders." I think they thought we were crazy. But later, when Colby was making loud grunting sounds as he climbed up each and every rung, people were laughing about how cute he was and the same older couple was like, "Wow, your kids are great hikers!" So...we proved to people that kids CAN do stuff!

Spruce Tree House (kind of in the background below) is apparently the most well-preserved dwelling at the park. Years ago you used to be able to hike down and go through it on your own, but now there is some danger of falling rocks, so for several years the trail has been closed and you can just see it from the overlook areas. Bummer!

We went up to the highest point in the park and you can see four states: Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Way off in the distance (hard to see in the photo!) is Shiprock, which is a huge rock formation in New Mexico that we usually pass by on our way to and from Utah. The kids (Skyler especially) thought it was super awesome that we could see all the way to Shiprock from where we were.

When we went to Long House (another special tour), it was cool to see where the ancient people had carved these little water holes into the rock to catch the small amounts of water that were seeping from the bottom of the rock. You can even see where they carved a little divet to make a track for the water to go into the hole. Some of the holes were empty because water doesn't seep there anymore, but this one was still full of water.

If you look really close at the photo below you can see a red handprint (with six fingers!) on the rock wall. At Long House you could look inside one of the towers that was still intact and way up high on the walls were some vibrant red designs painted. Because it has been protected from the elements, even after 800 years the paint still looks like it was done recently. It was super cool!

Below is a white handprint that was way up high on the ceiling at Long House. I feel like handprints really make it feel more real. These were actual people who lived and worked her almost 1000 years ago, and they left their handprint behind.

We spent Sunday and Monday at Mesa Verde, and then on Monday evening we headed up to Spanish Fork to drop the kids off at my mom's house so we could go to Idaho to look at houses.

Summer Road Trip Days 1-2 (Chaco Culture National Historical Park)

I'm just going to say now: Prepare for photo overload. We took a two-week road trip this time, and I have A LOT of pictures. I almost didn't, though. When I was copying the photos from my camera memory card to my computer, Colby pushed the off button on the power strip that powers my computer, printer, etc. When I rebooted it all, about two hundred of my photos from this trip were gone. They didn't make the copy to my hard drive, but they DID delete from my memory card, so they were GONE. I searched everywhere on my computer. I'm not going to lie, I shed a LOT of tears for about 5 minutes. Then I started googling (my go-to for all problems!). I found a software I could download online that would search my memory card to recover deleted photos. It worked! About 10 of my 200 lost photos were corrupted and non-recoverable, but I got the rest back. Let's just mention again how much I LOVE Google. Seriously. LOVE.

Anyway! Those who know me know that I generally have one or two main destinations in mind for our road trips, and then I zoom in to Google Maps and look along our route to see if there are other things we can see/do along the way to break up the long drives. In this case our first main destination was going to be Mesa Verde National Park, but since that is about 8-9 hours away from our house, we needed something else. I wasn't too hopeful because this is New Mexico, and we've made that drive several times, and it's pretty barren.

However, I found Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and it was only about a 45 minute detour off our route. We left on Friday after Andy got off work and drove to a hotel in Albuquerque. On Saturday morning we headed out to Chaco. Let's just say...it is in legit in the middle of NOWHERE!! I mean, I'd read that getting there was a little difficult, but this was so strange! We turned off the main highway and followed our GPS directions. Suddenly we found ourselves on this bumpy dirt road headed off into the sagebrush. Andy was like, "You're SURE this is the way?!?" But...there were signs that kept telling us where to turn, so yes, I was sure. You would think they might want to pave the road someday so that more people will come visit, but...I guess not?!

After about 20 miles on the dirt road (some parts were pretty well-maintained gravel and others not so much), we arrived. They had this nice sign at the beginning of the park, and a really nice Visitor's Center.

After stopping at the Visitor's Center we headed out to hike around some ruins. The trails were fairly short and flat, so it was a totally easy hike for kids.

The ruins here were HUGE. I think they said the first one we saw covered almost three acres, and they were originally two or three stories tall. I always love going to places like this. I try to imagine what it would have been like a thousand years ago when it was a bustling community of people. What were their lives like? What did they do for fun? How many people lived in each tiny room?

It was really cool that you could actually walk through the buildings and see all the rooms and stuff.

The wall below is the outer wall of this complex. It was amazingly straight for being built so long ago. We were trying to comprehend just how much work went into the construction of such a huge community. Carving the stones from the nearby cliffs, shaping them into these brick-like shapes...it's just amazing.

The nearby cliffs were cool, too. You could see where they pulled rock from to create their homes. Also, if you look close in the one below, there were a bunch of these bird nests that were made out of mud (or something?) way up high on the walls all over the place.

Below is a zoomed in picture of the nests. It you zoom in even more, you can actually see a bird in the one on the right.

There were also Petroglyphs on the walls. I'm sure there were many more at one time, but with the wind wearing away the rocks for hundreds of years, some have disappeared.

In the photo below you can see huge chunks of boulders around the path. Apparently back when these dwellings were first built (this one is called Pueblo Bonito, and contains over 800 rooms), this huge slab of cliff that later scientists estimated to weigh about 5 million pounds already looked like it might fall, and the Chacoans built a retaining wall out of dirt, logs, and rocks to prop up the wall and try to protect their home. Luckily for them, the main portion didn't fall while they lived there, but there is evidence that a portion of it had previously fallen and crushed some smaller dwellings, possibly killing some people. Almost a thousand years later, in 1941, the huge chunk finally did fall, and crushed over 30 rooms of the main dwelling. (If anyone else is nerdy like me and thinks this is super interesting, here's a link to an article from 1939, before the rock fell: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/region_111/vol1-1e.htm).

The wall below is part of Pueblo Bonito as well. That place was HUGE. I would love to be able to go back in time and see it when it was a thriving home to a whole community.

The kids thought it was crazy how tiny the doors and windows were. We told them a) it was easier to keep out the elements that way; and b) people were generally shorter back then, so it didn't require quite the amount of stooping we had to use to get through it all.

Imagine when this was actually a two-story building. You can still see where the floor/ceiling was way back when. I assume it was made of wood, so it has rotted out over time.

Below was a room you could go in that just had the doorway to get in and this one window, but it actually still had the ceiling intact on top, so it was dark. It's hard to comprehend living here when all the rooms would have been this dark even in midday.

After we were done at Chaco we got in the car to drive to Mesa Verde. As soon as we got in Colby said, "I other one sandwich, please." So we gave him another sandwich, but within a couple of bites (about 1 minute) he was sound asleep with a mouthful of PB&J!

Random Summer Fun

Ally found these matching dresses on clearance at Walmart, so she picked out some for her and Kylee.

In June Andy found a job in Iowa that sounded AMAZING. He'd been looking at it for about a month, and finally decided we should go check it out. We made a very quick trip to Iowa one weekend. And when I say quick I mean like drove to Denver on Friday after work to drop off our kids with Connie, arrived close to midnight, left Connie's house at 4:30am to catch our flight, stayed in Iowa Saturday and half of Sunday, flew back to Denver, and drove home -- arriving around 3am in time for Andy to go to work Monday morning. We saw this dinosaur skeleton in the airport in Chicago? Or maybe Madison? I can't remember.

The city we went to was on the corner of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana, right on the banks of the Mississippi River. Those are three states I had never been to before, and it was a BEAUTIFUL area!

The job sounded great and the area seemed great as well, but both Idaho Falls and Iowa offered Andy jobs, and ultimately it was decided that Idaho Falls was the better fit for our family, so we accepted that job and will be moving up there in September.

Kylee's friend Anabelle (our next-door neighbor) bought a tent and the girls set it up and had a campout in the backyard.

As part of the summer reading program the library does games every Wednesday morning, so we went there a few times. The kids love it!

For the 4th of July we went to the little Carlsbad parade and then had a BBQ with our neighbors and friends. It was really fun! Later we watched the city fireworks show from our driveway, and did some sparklers.

In July Connie came down for a week so that Pax could attend zoo camp with Kylee and Skyler. While they were here we of course had to visit the Caverns again.

The library was doing a "Story Time" event where the kids could wear their jammies and bring a stuffed animal and they would watch a short play and then get cookies and milk. We got all the way there and found out the event was cancelled because one of the members of the play was sick. LAME! You would think they might post that on their Facebook or something before people actually show up...

On the last day of zoo camp the kids did their little program for the parents like they did last year. They sang us songs and said little speaking parts about birds, since that was the theme this year. Then they got their certificates. I'm kinda sad that we're moving and won't be able to do zoo camp anymore!

I LOVE to sit in the hammock. Pretty much it's what I do every afternoon during quiet/nap time. One day Skyler and Ally came out to sit with me and Ally wanted me to take a picture of the three of us. I'm not great at selfies, and apparently neither is Skyler!

We signed up to feed the missionaries and then found out that Andy was on call that night (he had thought he wasn't). Usually he's home by 3 anyway so we didn't think it would be a big deal. Unfortunately, that day was super busy and he didn't end up getting home until almost 7. The missionaries arrived at 5 and it was pouring rain so we couldn't even have a picnic outside! I asked them if they would rather take their food to go or have a garage picnic. They voted for garage. It was FREAKISHLY hot and humid, but the kids thought it was the best and the missionaries *claimed* it was a "fun" variation from their normal routine.😆