Mesa Verde visit




Cliff House from accross the canyon.

 

Yesterday we had a very nice day long visit to Mesa Verde which is 35 miles west of Durango.  We got up early and were on the road by 8 AM.  Two ranger led tours are available this time of year so we saw the Cliff House (above) and the Balcony House with the rangers.  (Several winters ago we cross country skied in Mesa Verde and saw these dwellings with Twyla and Greg.  We even saw some wild horses this trip also.) 

The ranger talks are very informative and we learned that only about 15% of the ancestral Puebloans actually lived in the cliff dwellings.  Most lived up on the mesa as seen at Far View (below).

Large house complex on the mesa at Far View site.

It was fun accessing the dwellings and getting around in them.  We concluded that there was a natural selection process built into the building architecture.  If you are to large or not sure footed you lived on the mesa, otherwise your life expectancy was probably short.  Just climbing and scurrying around at 7000+ feet can be exhausting.


Kiva roof structure

  



How old is this wood?

  










We saw many Kiva structures in all the locations.  They are the round buildings.  These were the central living space for a family group and were kept warm by the central fire pit.  The space was roofed by placing wood beams along the perimeter and then across the top leaving the roof supported with no internal vertical beams.  The smoke hole in the center was also the entering and leaving place via a ladder.
How old is a structure?  The wooden beams are cored (a piece of cork is used to replace the core hole as in the picture) and the growth rings compared to the area's master list to establish when the wood was cut thereby establishing the structure's age.  Carbon 14 or other radiocarbon methods are not as accurate.
 

I'm watching you!  Don't even think of steping on this wall.

 

I'm watching you.  Have you taken enough water with you? 



  





The mesa wild life was fun to watch them watching you.

How many ways do you know to use the Yucca plant?  When the ancestral Puebloans were finished with it, all of the plant,even the odor, was used!