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seemed somehow fresher, cleaner, more inviting. The Rockies of Colorado is truly a unique and wonderful place,
(3) historic downtown Durango, (4) on the San Juan Skyway I drove by the the town of Ouray, which is set in a
valley and surrounded by mountains, a majestic site and old west authentic, (5) a scenic overlook along the San
Juan Skyway, and (6) here is a small town (Silverton?) City Hall with a beautiful snowcapped mountain backdrop.
and relaxing to incredible views of valleys, stratified cliffs and large gorges. Fifteen miles into the park via mountain
roads I came upon the park’s Visitor Center, where I learned about the history of the Indian cliff dwellers and the
archeologists who discovered their ruins. I had a 3pm guided tour of “The Cliff Palace.” “The Cliff Palace” is what
you think of when you hear Mesa Verde. It is the largest alcove dwelling in the U.S. and was inhabited by the
Ancestral Puebloans first approximately 600AD and, then again, between 1190 – 1280, when most of the
construction was done. A large portion of the site is dominated by ceremonial kivas, where the Ancestral Pueblo
Indians would pray and communicate with their G-ds. When it would get extremely cold, they would stay in these
kivas, because they were built into the earth – thus insulated. Besides the “Cliff Palace,” there are many other cliff
dwellings in the Mesa Verde National Park, indicating that this region had a large population for many centuries,
before westerners arrived. When they departed, for unknown reasons, most went to northern Arizona and the Rio
Grande in New Mexico, and (6) more Colorado countryside - grazing land with exposed stratified mountain range.
