June 30th, Drive to Mesa Verde, Colorado

We had a simple breakfast of cold cereal in our room before heading west-northwest to Mesa Verde National Park. Along the way we passed thru Durango, Colorado, where we intended to take a steam train ride, but pressed on so that we would arrive early enough to be fairly certain of getting a campsite. The scenery along the way was very impressive—sometimes we saw a high plateau kind of vegetation while at other times the rugged and lightly-forested mesas or mountains would dominate the skyline. We passed some cowboys herding the cattle from one grazing area to another. Twice we saw mountains carved out in such straight lines that we thought it must be due to human excavations or mining of some kind. But we couldn’t find any other evidence of such activity so we remained somewhat mystified about what caused the angularity—if it’s natural I wonder what processes would do that.

Our strategy worked well in that we arrived at the park around 11:30 and had no trouble locating an empty site in the Morefield Campground. The site had a tent area that was big enough for our tent, for once, and also boasted some big bushes at the edge to give us a smidgen of shade. Altho the air was in the 70s or so, the sun was surprisingly hot to the point of enervating both of us, and we spent much of the afternoon huddled in our camp chairs in the shade at the edge of the campsite.

I expect that when the cliff dwellers lived here in the old days, they prized the spots of shade in the caverns or under the trees every bit as much as we did. Reading the park guide, I was a bit surprised that the climate and vegetation in the park are about the same now as they were at the heyday of the ancient culture from 1100-1300—the cliff dwellers were primarily farmers and it certainly seems too arid to farm successfully nowadays. I am particularly impressed that they hunted, farmed, and created a vibrant culture based on stone and bone tools—cutting down a tree with a stone ax just must be a back-breaking amount of work. They were, I suppose, acclimatized to this climate and I can almost imagine one saying, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!”

For us modern-day marshmallows, it was definitely the heat and we became so enervated that we even took turns pounding in the stakes for the tent. We decided to rest that afternoon and start really exploring the park the next day. I worked on filling in gaps in the journal while Monika took advantage of the nearby laundry facilities to do some wash. While we were having a snack a deer strolled thru the campground and passed right thru the campsite next to us—we got a great close-up look at the critter but of course had left the camera in the car so no photos. After sunset I was astonished at the number of visible stars—a darn sight more than in the east, that’s for sure! I expect the high altitude, low humidity, and low air or light pollution all help make such a noticeable difference.