Adventures to Southwest Colorado - Day 2

The plan for the day was to explore the Mesa Verde National Park which is home to the cliff dwellings of the ancient Pueblo Indians about 700 years ago. There were a few ranger tours that we can do and some of them did sound a little daunting for little kids. So, i started us off with Cliff Palace which seemed the most interesting but not as physically challenging.

This was by far the biggest cliff dwelling and had a few ladders for the kids to maneuver so that we can gauge their ability and interest. Turned out they loved it, even when they had to sit through the ranger talks during the whole tour(though some grim threats had to be doled out).

It was also interesting for us to explore these ancient dwellings and learn more about the history in this area.

View of the cliff dwelling across the canyon

Tyler was excited to start the descent

Cody was also excited

Some ladder to get up

The Cliff Palace

The kids loved it

Tyler even went on his own to check out ancient painting

Ancient mud wall

Tyler

Family pic!

Due to several fires, the park is severely scarred with dead and burnt trees which i found eerily beautiful. And the plants take about 100-300 hundred years to grow back. So, it's going to look like this for a LONG time.

When the kids got out of the Cliff Palace tour, they were raving about how brave they were and how fun it was. So, we decided to go check out a smaller site before we break for lunch. The Spruce Tree house is a smaller site that we could go explore ourselves. It was a short hike down to the dwelling and it had a kiva(small underground round room).

The Spruce Tree house

Ladder into the Kiva

Of course he had to go down(we all did!)

Someone's a little grumpy

Parting family picture

On our hike back up

Tyler enjoying an Indian fry bread

After lunch, it was nap time and we figured it was a good time to head over to Four Corners which was about 1.5 hrs away.

At Four Corners

1 family 4 states

Alan confirming it was indeed the four corners(it was a little off)

Some interesting rock formations

After we got back to our rental property, the kids explored the surroundings a little found a little tractor.

Beautiful Sunset