Mesa Verde National Park

Today we toured Mesa Verde National Park. The park is huge, we traveled 15 miles from the entrance to the Visitor's center to pick up our guided tour tickets of Cliff Palace and Balcony House. We saw a small herd of wild horses on route to the visitors center. At the visitors center, we also saw wild turkey and mule deer. You will see some our pictures of Balcony House and Cliff palace here.

We had to climb 30 feet of ladder to get to Balcony Palace, so Ginny was a little reluctant, but she did very well with climbing. We also had to crawl through 13 feet of a 16 inch wide square tunnel to get from one section to another. The villages (pueblos) were used over 1000 years ago and the native people were only about 5 feet tall. They farmed corn, beans and squash on the mesas or plateus and resided in the canyon villages for shelter. Many natives lived on the plateus and came to the cliff villages for ceremonial purposes. The largest cliff villages were home to about a hundred natives. I was surprised to realize that there were many of these pueblos in the canyon. The little green and blue lizard was seen along a hiking trail. His colors were quite bright and he was about a foot long including the tail.

After the full day of hiking and climbing, the girls hit the pool and hot tub here at the campground, while Ginny and I cooked supper. Skipper was able to fend for himself in the camper (with the AC on) while we were gone, as he got into the chocolate chip cookies.

We are off to the Grand Canyon tomorrow, but will be stopping off at the four corners tomorrow, so the girls can stand in four states at once. Well I guess each of us could stand in a different state and talk to each other.

Colorado Springs To Mesa Verde

The wind finally quit and we had a good travel day today. The 7% grades into Rio Grande National Forest were tolerable as we continued our travels to Mesa Verde. There was still a good amount of snow at the higher altitudes, and we stopped for a long snack in the camper at one of the pull overs as we looked out at the winter that summer left behind . The stop in the pictures is at the Continental Divide. We hiked a short trail into a snowy trail and took more pictures. I threw a snow ball and Skipper tried to take off after it and almost pullled Ginny throough the snow to find it.

Before Rio Grande, we also took another few pictures at the rest stop where we had lunch in the camper. Skipper was also able to eat his food and water much easier in the camper. A good trick to get him to drink water is to feed him some ice.

We are in a private park campground close to the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park for two nights. We are going to check out the cliff dwellings tomorrow. This campground has excellent WiFi, so I am typing this up in the camper. The temperature was about 65 degrees when we pulled in so this put a damper on the kids swimming. It is supposed to be 85 degrees tomorrow, so maybe they can swim after all the hiking.

Colorado Springs

Well we made it on schedule to Colorado Springs on the second day of travel. We fought an incredible head wind from Kansas City all the way to Colorado Springs, about 550 miles. The wind blew from west to east for two travel days. Wind gusts were up to 40 mph, with sustained 20 mph. Basically, the truck could maintain 65 mph with the 20 mph head wind (with the air conditioner going and DVD player on), which means we were pushing 80 mph into the wind. As a result, I had to keep overdrive turned off for the last 600+ miles over two days. Did I mention that it was also HOT!! ?? About 95 to 100 degrees in Kansas! And that's with the wind chill! We were also climbing in altitude the whole way, from about 1000 feet to 6000 feet. Don't ask me about the gas bill, but we have been paying an average of 2.75 for gas so far. Needless to say, the truck did pretty good with the wind and climbing, considering we had almost 5000 pounds of trailer plus the bikes and fire wood and the inside of the truck was fully loaded. Hopefully, the wind will die down tomorrow as we head for Mesa Verde (2000 year old dwellings built into the side of cliffs).

Our first night we spent in Clinton State Park in Lawrence Kansas (near Kansas City MS). It was a nice park with plenty of grasslands, and a huge blue lake. We were lucky to get a site as there were many folks celebrating Memorial Day. We got there around 7:30 our time 6:30pm their time and the kids enjoyed a round of passing the football and soccer. Other than the wind howling, it was a quiet, not eventful nite.

Today we made it into Colorado, fighting the head winds and steeep uphills. We are camped now at "Garden of the Gods" camppground. They had a small band playing at the office as we pulled in. The campground is based at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The girls swam in the pool and hot tub, and later played pool and met some friends. I enjoyed the rest of the band while Ginny called home. The WIFI connection was okay at the camper for a while, while Ginny was on line, but when I tried it was weak. So I was sitting outside in front of the office, and another wind gust blew a bunch of sand and I thought I better get the laptop indoors. So, I am sitting inside the laundry mat for a few minutes doing this update, so don't heckle me about typos (HaHa!).

Oh, by the way, you can simply mouse click on the pictures to get a larger view of somme of them.

Getting Ready

This will be our family's first road trip to the southwest. We have a travel trailer and we will be staying in national, state and private parks along the way. In a nutshell, we will be traveling to Mesa Verde, Four Corners, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands and finally Moab. We leave this Saturday, and the trip will last a couple of weeks. I will use wireless internet where ever I can to make updates to this blog along the way. My first update log should be no later than Sunday night as the private park we will stay in has wireless.
I didn't want to take two laptops with us, so I will be borrowing the oldest daughter's Macintosh iBook to make posts whenever she will let me log on.
Well, everything is almost packed and we will hopefully be able to begin the trip early Saturday morning to make it to Clinton State Park near Kansas City before dark. It will be a quick overnite stop, but I might get a chance to jog through the park before we pull out for Colorado, which is where the sightseeing really begins. We hope that by traveling with the camper, we will be able to see and experience many things along the way.
I will post as many pictures as I can on this blog so stay tuned...