Mesa Verde National Park

I went there with my boyfriend for my birthday and it was pretty awesome. There are guided tours which you have to pay for, but also plenty of self-guided places to walk for free. We tent-camped for one night (about $20) in the park. This was a week before they closed camping sites for the winter. The weather was great during the day, but at night it got cold quick. It was 32 degrees when we went to sleep and 18 degrees when we woke up the next morning! Our blankets were covered in ice. Saw some great wildlife, deers everywhere! But, although it was a great experience, camping at this time of year is a bit uncomfortable.

But there’s a lot of it that I didn’t remember from 4th grade.

We stopped in at Mesa Verde on the way to New Mexico.

Things that I did not recall:

• That the ruins were so far from the main highway (about 25 miles).
• That to get to the ruins the road climbed to an extremely high elevation.
• That the road was soooooo terribly winding.

All that aside, Mesa Verde is a great place to visit. I just have to remember to arrive a little earlier in the day. We arrived at the gate around 2:30 p.m. Although we got to see a lot in the amount of time that we were there, I felt a little bit too rushed.

I will be visiting this place again later this summer. The last time that I visited I was in about the 4th grade.

I am looking forward to going back and this time bringing my family with me.

I would really like to see the cave dwellings at Mesa Verde. National Parks are generally not my thing, but cities are. I would love to visit this ancient Native American “city”.

It’s a tad crowded for what it is which makes is harder to imagine this place as it might have been back in the day, still it is pretty amazing. If you go give yourself time to hike around and take a tour. The tour guides are packed with interesting ‘did you know’s’.