Tourists

We took a short bike ride today,

but our turn around point was an all day affair. Our one hour bike ride took us from Durango west on US 160, a repeat of part of the route we took last Friday to 4 Corners National Monument (4 at once blog).  Today we turned off at another National Park

Outside the Visitors’ Center we saw this odd looking sculpture.

Closer inspection revealed a man climbing something with a basket on his back and a tired look on his face.  It didn’t mean much then, but became clear later on in the day.  In the Visitors’ Center, I stamped my National Parks Passport, and we bought tickets for two ranger led tours of two cliff dwellings ($5 each, total $20).  We arrived at the park at 9:30.  Tours were led every 1/2 hour, but we couldn’t get our first tour until 2:30.  

With several hours at our disposal, we had two options.  We could make the long drive along Wetherill Mesa just to see the farthest part of the park, or we could drive along Chapin Mesa to where our tour started and see what was available to do there until 2;30.  With 20 miles between the park entrance and the cliff dwellings we were going to tour, we decided to ride directly there.  We had no trouble filling the hours.  The route took us up, across, and down about 6 mesas, with lots of great  bike riding twisty ups and downs.  20 miles of this took an hour, plus we stopped at numerous pull-offs for scenic views and to read info boards.  Sometimes the views were along the road, and some required a short walk.

Sleeping Ute Mountain on the left

Those people are standing on the remnant of the first automobile road into the park.  In 1914, six cars paid $1 each to drive three hours along the narrow dirt track which came to be known as the the Knife’s Edge Road.

All along the way we rode in and out of the path of a 2002 fire.  Later we learned that it would be 2152 before the mesa top would look the way it did before the fire.

There are 600 cliff dwellings throughout the park.  Visitors can see only three of them up close via ranger led tours.  Many can be seen only from across canyons.

We made a stop at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum where we learned that the knowledge of the  pueblans increased, so did the sophistication of their houses, starting with simple one room houses on the surface to larger two story buildings.  At the Museum site, we had intended to take a self-guided tour of a nearby cliff dwelling, but found the trail was closed by a mudslide.  We rode on to our tour site.

After eating our picnic lunch, we still had a couple of hours until our tour started.  We hopped the bike for a ride along the Mesa Top Loop.  Here we found several pole barns erected over original dwelling sites,

with visual depictions of how they looked when they were in use.  Sites showed the progression in building techniques.  The simplest were built on the mesa tops, the most sophisticated were built in scoops cut into the mesa sides.

There were several of these along the way, representing the changes in building techniques that we learned about at the Museum.  Finishing the loop we arrived back at our tour just a few minutes before it started. 

This was called the Balcony House.  This was the most strenuous of our two tours.  To access the site we went down 700’ via metal stairs and a paved path.

Then we went back up via a series of steps and ladders.  Duane arrived at the top unscathed, no mean feat for a guy who has is nervous about heights and has trouble bending his knees.

View of one of the ladders from the top.  Note the circular holes, or kivas, which were used for social halls.  These are not dug into the ground, but built up from the bedrock.  They would have been covered with a lattice of cedar poles and mud plaster with a hole in the middle for access.

The only way out was up another series of ladders and steps.  Duane was not the only nervous person here, but we all made it to the top.

Our next tour was at 4:30.  We had enough time to ride there, park, hit the restroom and refill our water bottles.  This was a village of about 60 dwellings. 

When our ranger had us all safely down the metal stairs and along the path to the site, he seated us in a shady spot while he explained how the inhabitants lived here.  As he talked we could see along the fronts of the buildings,

and had a view of the spot where we started.  For the second part of our talk we walked to the other side of the pueblo and sat in the shade there.  After imparting all of his wisdom, our guide said that as we walked up the steps on our way out, we should pay attention to those holes in the wall. 

He wanted us to compare our climb up stone steps and wood ladders

with these hand and foot holds that the pueblans had to use to scale the wall.  It was then that I remembered the sculpture at the Visitors’ Center, and suddenly it made sense.  The guy wasn’t climbing a tree,

he was scaling the wall using these little holes to climb.

Somehow we didn’t feel quite as tired as we climbed the last ladder and finished our tours.

By this time (5:30) we were hot, tired and hungry.  We retraced our road up, across, and down the 20+ miles to the park entrance, then 20 more miles to the town of Mancos to find air conditioning and food.  No luck there, so we rode on another 27 miles to Durango, stopped for dinner at Denney’s and finally arrived home about 8 pm.  What a day!

Tourists again tomorrow!

Louise and Duane