Leslie and David's Wanderings: 22 March 2021 Mesa Verde NP

Our first National Park of 2021! It’s a short drive to the entrance of Mesa Verde NP from Delores. We found the park bookstore open at the entrance, so we stopped in and got our park passport stamp, Leslie’s postcards, David’s park hat and a new park cup for our collection. We confirmed that the park also covers Yucca House National Monument administration and got our park passport stamp for Yucca House as well. After our shopping spree, we drove to the park entrance station to pick up our park maps and cover our entrance fee (our new year long park pass has already paid for itself). But they did not have any park brochures for Yucca House NM. From the entrance it’s a 21 mile drive to the visitor center and museum which is still closed due to COVID. The Lodge, restaurant, all trails to the cliff dwellings, Wetherill Mesa drive, and Cliff Palace Loop drive were closed for the winter season. We were able to drive the Mesa Top Loop and see the cliff dwellings from across the canyon. The cliff dwellings were built between 800 and 1200 AD. Some of the houses were five stories tall (Tower House). At one point there was over 2000 people living in the canyon. We were there in the afternoon which provided better lighting into the cliff dwellings. After viewing some of the mesa top pit houses, Tower House, Spruce Tree House, Balcony House, Cliff Palace, Far View sites and the Sun Temple, we decided a hike was in order. We hiked the Petroglyph loop trail (3.1 miles, 446ft of altitude gain, 1865 calories burned). It starts out behind the visitor center and drops down into the canyon. We started the trail at 3:30. The sign said they closed the trail at 5:30 and the park entrance (21 miles away) closes at 6:30. But since it was only supposed to be 2 miles, we figured it would not be a problem. The lower portion of the loop drops down into the canyon and follows along the eastern canyon wall between the top of the mesa and the canyon bottom. We discovered there was a lot of up and down with lots of stairs, narrow cracks to squeeze through, several rocky scrambles which took some skill and team work to get over and a little technical climb at the end of the loop back to the top of the mesa. So it took us a lot longer than we expected because we were being careful not to injure ourselves. But it was fun and challenging. The mesa top was a easy stroll back to the visitor center with beautiful views into the canyon. We got back to the Behemoth with 5 minutes to spare! The sad part is, even though we were looking, we did not see one petroglyph!