October 24-30,2017

Another unsung hero, so to speak. We are camped on BLM land facing the Mesa- this is rough terrain, 12 campsites spread over 2-3 miles.
This is a really cool National Park! Pueblo cliff dwellings- which came after pit houses and Pueblo houses on the Mesa (which is actually a cuesta- a mesa with a slope). We actually took a walking tour (climbing actually) of Balcony House- down 3 stories of stairs, up 30ft on a stick ladder, through a 12ft long 18inch wide tunnel, up to 15ft stick ladders, and stairs cut into the rock.

ALL of this was on the edge of the cliff, hundreds of feet above the bottom of the canyon!

The cliff dwelling ruins were amazing- about 70% original! Oh, did I mention we were at 7000ft elevation? The Puebloans lived here from 550ad to 1250 ad when they all just left over about 30 years. Was it the 23 year drought? Tribal conflicts? It is a mystery, however, it is known that they moved south and formed new Pueblo villages.

On a side note- our new camper is working out really well! We can’t always find everything, especially if we decide to move it to a “better” spot in the camper Because the trailer is “off road” (heavy chassis and suspension) we are able to go on rougher roads than we could with the truck camper. And we are drawing attention- yesterday while at Walmart, a big older motorhome pulled in beside us and they wanted to admire and chat about our rig!

We’ve moved to McPhee Resevoir campground- Forest Service, semi-closed for the season, so no services, but only 5 bucks a night. 3-4 other campers in 60 sites! This resevoir was made in the 1980s – they moved out the few people here and some houses, it had been a lumber mill town back in the day with logs being brought in from the east by rail.

We’re waiting for Clare’s long overdue laptop to be returned by Dell and FEDEX- long story of misery for this saga that we will spare you 🙂
40-60,000 Ancient Puebloans (or Anasazi) lived in the four corners areas around 900- 1200ad, so there are tons of archealogical sites to visit. We have confirmed that different federal agencies do not always support each other ( no surprise there, right?) Mesa Verde National Park only barely shares info about the other local Puebloan sites and the BLM (bureau of land management) barely shares info about Mesa Verde…makes it a little tricky to figure where to visit in the thousands of acres with sites. We have had to ask detailed questions of visitor center staff to get deeper info.
Did a 4 mile hike into Sand Canyon, elevation 5400-5900ft. Viewed 3 small Anasazi sites, as we hiked up into the canyon- these pics show the very delineated layers of “geological history” of these mesas.

We are pretty well aclimated to the elevation; especially when we see how other hikers our age struggle 🙂 And Rhylee just plugs along so long as food and water are available!

RAIN! It rained last night! We can’t even remember the last time we had rain ( we had snow three weeks ago in the CO mountains), perhaps it was in Idaho in August…? It was only a few hours of showers, but it was rain. And it brought out even more mule deer than the 3-4 we’ve been seeing every day- 22 at one point.