Aspen, Mesa Verde, Durango-Silverton Railroad - Day 2

Hey everyone,
Here I am with our Day 2 activities of the trip at Mesa Verde National Park.  We had initially planned to leave early for the park but you know how it goes...everyone was tired from previous day, so the day started a bit late and we left our condo around 9 am (I think...), but no complaints there since we had a good breakfast to start the morning :).  We started our journey to head to Mesa Verde National Park which was about 45 minutes drive just to get to the Visitor Center.  We got some info on what sites to check out in the park.  Lucky for us, we chose the right day to come otherwise they were going to close some of the bigger sites in the park from the next day!  We got the park map, and booked a guided tour for cliff palace (one of their famous tourist spots in the park).  We booked the last timing of Cliff Palace tour so that way we could cover one side of the park and then come back to the 2nd side later since the distance to both places was about half an hour from visitor center and in completely opposite directions :(.

Just to give you guys an idea of what this park is about, here is some info.  Mesa Verde National Park consists of the best cliff dwellings in the world, features homes and villages built by Ancient Pueblo People (definition from wikipedia).  Now, in my words, these are built in such a way that it's hard to get to them (from our hike experience) in caves or under the cliffs.  Just because they're built in such areas doesn't make them immune to the weather because if you look at one of the pictures below, they're all open and you can tell how hard it must have been for the people to live in severe weather conditions.  We took our first hike to Long House where the 1st half was very easy, and simple walk, but the 2nd half is something we didn't expect.  We had to go from top to bottom via stairs, zig-zag narrow pathway, and few slopes to just get a glimpse of the Long House.

Long House, Mesa Verde National Park

Long House (closer look at the houses)

Awesome first sight of this place!  This was something different from all of my previous trips, so I was exited.  The first picture above shows the stairs at the far end which is where we came from and then took the ladder (also seen in the 1st picture) to go up to one of the homes' areas.  The 2nd picture is a closer look at one of the rooms where people used to hang out (kind of like drawing room or it might be bedroom...I don't remember :-/).  Pretty neat, isn't it?  There was a guide who was walking around, answering any questions that people may have about the place, and also giving some background about the Long House.  She, the guide, pointed out the fingerprints on the walls that were left by the people (and still visible after so many years)!  There was some other interesting stuff too but don't remember much of it.  So, if you're interested in knowing more about this historic place, I would definitely recommend talking to the guide or seeing if they have a guided tour for this or not.

After checking out the Long House, we started heading back to our cars which was equally hard since the hike itself was difficult and we were tired and hungry as well.  It was getting close to our tour for Cliff Palace, so we just decided to eat once we got to that location.  We had a nice lunch in the parking lot and headed to the tour meet-up location.  We could clearly see the Cliff Palace at the very bottom of the cliff and with that my curiosity also increased to know how the hell we were going to get there...

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park

The guide came, took our tickets, and then directed us to head to the site.  It was indeed a ride since the hike included going through very narrow passages, steep stairs, and quite rocky path :-0.  While the other tour before us had not finished, he sat us all down for a while, giving little background on the place, and once the coast was clear, he moved us to look at the site.  He pointed us to several different things such as their kitchen, how there were paintings on the wall inside the building (where we couldn't really go but just take a peak through a tiny square window), etc.  We took couple of pictures, group photos, and of course, selfies!!  Now, the route to go out of this place was different from the one we came from.  It was all going through steep stairs within a very narrow passage!  Hats off to two of my friends who did this difficult hike with a year old baby!!

We took a short break for water and restrooms and then decided to check out the rest of the park.  We wanted to visit the Spruce Tree House, but couldn't due to time constrain.  We did the Mesa Top Loop where there are multiple sites that you could see from far under the cliffs that were not accessible via foot/vehicle.  We stopped at couple of locations but I don't remember any of the names of the stops we made except the last one (Sun Temple).  The structures were different for each of the stops that we made.  Below, I have few pictures from couple of stops that we made.

One of the sites @ Mesa Top Loop

Sun Temple, Mesa Top Loop

After this loop tour, we still tried to make it to the Spruce Tree House but were late by 5-10 minutes, so couldn't get to see it :(.  This was the last thing on our agenda for the park, so we all happily bid our goodbye to the park.  My only recommendation for this park would be that if you want to cover more things on the park, get to the park early in the day (around 7:30/8 am) and I am sure you will cover most of the attractions in a day.

Now, taking you back to the previous night, we found out that two more of our friends were going to join us on this trip the next day (meaning our Day 2).  They were going to come to Durango by night, so we all decided to meet up for dinner before heading back to the condo.  We chose to dine at the Himalayan restaurant in Durango.  The service was good there but the food was ok, I mean I have had better kofta curry and paneer tikka masala before, so it wasn't anything special.  Later, all of us got back to the condo, and proudly gave tour of the condo to two friends who joined us.  No one had the energy after a tiring day but we still stayed up, hung out and had a good time with everyone!

This wraps up my Day 2 activities of the trip.  Next day, we check out from our condo and head for the Durango-Silverton Railroad (half day trip), but more on that in my next post!!