Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Mesa Verde Day 2 to Canyonlands Natl. Park

Went out to Wetherill Mesa to see long house.  We arrived early and saw a bit of another cliff dwelling by the tram station.DSC_6898_Web DSC_6904_Web

We waited a bit for the tram to leave and went out to Long House with very perky ranger guide who tried to instill the site with a sense of mystery.  One of the cooler things we learned from her was the early rock fall warning system the Ancestral Puebloans had devised.  They jammed sticks into all the cracks in the roof overhead and when a stick fell out it indicated that that slab was about to fall.

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Then we looked at the rest of the loop atop that mesa which showed the progression from pit house to kiva to cliff dwelling.

Then we drove to Canyonlands NP. 

On the way, we saw newspaper rock where 3000 years of pictographs had been pecked into the black weathering on the sandstone.

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Stopping for the night at Needles Outpost campground since it was memorial day weekend and Gary was afraid the the park’s would be  full.  It was. DSC_7034_Web

Pretty cool site, don’t you think? 

We drove around the park as we arrived at 6:00 when the visitor center was already closed. 

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We saw roadside ruin and the pothole point with puddles that could have small critters in them.  We only saw snails that day.  Roadside ruin was an Ancestral Puebloan granary tucked away in a cliff hole.

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Returned to camp and it rained again….sigh.

We were dry, but Gary wanted to get nice photos of the rocks, but too much cloud cover. : (

The next a.m. he got up early and got this cool one. 

Evan wants to make a desktop out of it.DSC_7022_Web

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