Mesa Verde, Wildflowers, Mule deer, and Kansas

I love Colorado. I almost slapped myself last year because I drove right by Mesa Verde National Park and didn't stop! So this year, I decided to make a little day trip out of it. Had a really cool time. Took a nice little hike to a petroglyph panel, talked with several other travelers from Vermont and Pennsylvania, and got to see the infamous Cliff Palace, one of the many Anasazi cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park. After leaving, I stayed in a nice little town called Ouray, settled in a nice little mountain pass. It was so weird to look up and see a giant cloud looming over the town and realize that it was actually a mountain! :P The town strip there is cool-lots of neato gift shops and a brewery, where I stopped to have a stout and BBQ, as recommended by the bartender. After a nice walk back to the hotel, I noticed there was a mule deer munching on grass right next to my car (which was funny because I had seen it earlier and thought it was a yard ornament...) So I got some bread out of the car and ended up feeding the deer. It was amazing. The thing was as big as me and before I knew it, another guy (with a much larger set of antlers) walked up, wanting in on the feast. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life...yes, I know they were just deer, but they were wild animals, and they licked my fingers. :) Check out the pictures and video below (it was dark and a bit hard to see, but I think you can make it out...)

Signity sign sign.

Tunnelly-tunnel.

Some Anasazi pottery in the Mesa Verde Museum. From the parks brochure; "These were very accomplished potters, making vessels of many kinds including pots, bowls, canteens, ladles, jars, and mugs. Corrugated ware was used mostly for cooking and storage, while the elaborately decorated, smooth-surfaced black-on-white wares may have had both ceremonial and everyday uses. Women were probably the potters. Designs tended to be personal and local and most likely were passed down from mother to daughter. Design elements changed slowly, a characteristic that helps archaeologists and modern descendants date and possibly tack the location of early populations."

More pottery.

Nice little stairway on the hike to pictograph point (a misnomer, since they are actually petroglyphs.)

Those are stone tool marks, probably used for sharpening axes and other tools. From the parks brochure, " Ancestral Puebloans used all available materials, with no metals. From locally available trees, plants, animals and stone the made tools for grinding, cutting, pounding, chopping, scraping, perforating, polishing, and weaving. They used the diffing stick for farming, stone axe for clearing land, bow and arrow for hunting, and sharpened stones for cutting. They ground corn with the metate and mano and made wooden spindle whorls for weaving. From bone the fashioned awls for sweing and scrapers for working animal hides. Other than the mano and metate, most stone tools were made from stream cobbles, not the soft, cliff sandstone." That was used for sharpening. :P

Petroglyph panel at pictograph point in the park. From the trail guide, "Pictograph Point is the largest and best known group of petroglyphs in Mesa Verde....The Anasazi stood ont he ledge and chipped the design through the exterior desert varnish to the light sandstone beneath. In 1942, four Hopi men from northeastern Arizona visited pictograph point and interpreted some of the glyphs."

The Hopi interpretation of this is the "parrot clan took up residence at some distance from the Mountain Sheep Clan." You'll notice the line that runs below them, this is said to represent the actual canyon.

Here you can see, from the Hopi interpretations, the Mountain Sheep Clan, the sacred "sipapu" (the two spirals in the top right), which is the place at which the Pueblo people emerged from the earth (the Grand Canyon), and representations of the actual puebloan people (the large anthropomorphs at the bottom of the panel.)

More detail of the panel.

Nice view of the canyon from the trailhead.

This is known as the Spruce Tree House, which is located near a spring right next to the museum and just down the canyon from Cliff Palace. From the trail guide, "Spruce Tree House, the third largest cliff dwelling among several hundred within park boundaries (Cliff Palace and Long House are larger), was constructed between AD 1200 and 1276 by the Anasazi. The dwelling contains about 114 rooms and eight kivas, built into a natural cave measuring 216 feet at greatest width and 89 feet at its greatest depth. It is thought to have been home for about 100 people."

This is for all of my archaeology friends. :) Dendrochronology is loosely known as "tree-ring dating" and involves detailed carbon dating and counting of ancient tree rings to create a timeline of when the tree was alive. I spoke with an archaeologist on the pictograph point trail and he said that because of amazing preservation, most of the wood in the cliff dwellings is original, and that is one way they are able to assign dates to the structures.

Anasazi Potter.

Piece reconstructed from sherds.

This is Mogollon-style pottery.

Nice little brew I had at the restaurant at Mesa Verde.

The infamous Cliff Palace. From the brochure, "About 1,400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of canyon walls. Then in the late 1200s, in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away. Mesa Verde National Park preserved a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture. Archaeologists have called these people Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "the ancient foreigners." We now call them Ancestral Puebloans, reflecting their modern descendants..."

Me at Cliff Palace. I didn't go on the tour, the overlook was nice enough and I didn't want to pay another $15 to follow a park ranger around. :P

From the brochure, "We will never know the whole story; they left no written records and much that was important in their lives has perished. Yet for all their silence, these structures speak with a certain eloquence. They tell of a people adept at building, artistic in their crafts, and skillful in making a living from a difficult land. The structures are evidence of a society that, over centuries, accumulated skills and traditions and passed them on from generation to generation. By the Classic Period (AD 100 to AD 1300), Ancestral Puebloans were heirs of a vigorous civilization, whose accomplishments in community living and the arts must be ranked among the finest expressions of human culture in North America. Using nature to advantage, Ancestral Puebloans built their dwellings beneath the overhaning cliffs. Their basic construction material was sandstone that they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread. The mortar between the blocks was a mix of dirt and water. Living rooms averaged about six feet by eight feet, space enough for two or three persons. Isolated rooms in the rear and on the upper levels were generally used for storing crops. They were experienced builders, as the construction testifies. Walls are tall and straight and have withstood the tests of time and the elements. Many daily activities took place in open courtyards in from of the rooms. Fires built in the summer were mainly for cooking. In winter, when the alcove rooms were damp and uncomfortable, fires probably burned throughout the village. Smoke-blackened walls and ceilings are reminders of the biting cold these people lived with for several months each year.

Kiva from one of the earlier "pit houses," which were used prior to the construction of the cliff dwellings.

Scene from Park View Point in Mesa Verde National Park. One more blurb from the brochure..."Ancestral Puebloans spent much of their time getting food, even in the best years. Farming was their main work, but they supplemented crops of beans, corn, and squash by gathering wild plants and hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other game. Their only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys (dogs were domesticated prior to the arrival of the indigenous people into America, however-I learned that in New World Prehistory :P...Fortunaly, Ancestral Puebloans tossed their trash close by-scraps of food, broken pottery and tools, anything not wanted, went down the slope in front of their homes. Much of what we know about the daily life here comes from these garbage heaps." Hehe. :)

Rocky Mountain wildflowers for you, Sara! :)

I think this is poison hemlock...I could be mistaken.

These were the mule deer I fed. :) They weren't too thrilled with the camera flash.

I like this one. :)

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Tunnel.

Tunnel-vision.

Passenger train right outside of Georgetown, CO.

FINALLY, I saw some elk! :D

This is the gravesite of Buffalo Bill Cody. and his wife.

Statue outside the Buffalo Bill Cody museum.

And a sign on the fence. I thought it funny, since these aren't actually buffalo, their bison. :P 

Well folks, that was a wonderful drive through Colorado. I am now in Kansas City, Missouri and will be heading to St. Louis tomorrow to visit Cahokia, then off to Louisville to visit my aunt and uncle. Then I will be home! Check back for the final set of Road Trip 2011 pictures soon! Peace and love to all!

J