***UPDATE: now with photos!***
If you haven't yet, scroll down and read the previous post first. I just put it up but backdated it to the time of writing.
There's so much we've seen in the last couple of days!
Unfortunately I only have enough computer power/time to write text, so uploading pictures will have to wait. We managed to get up and get going for our only entire day at Mesa Verde on Saturday, and even got an apology after breakfast from one of the gentlemen who was staying with the noisy neighbors (the one who had legitimately attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to quiet his party the night before; apparently they didn't realize our tent was so close to their fire ring because they arrived after dark.)
Driving up to the mesa top to start our day was somewhat less nerve-wracking than getting into the park, partly because it was Mike's turn to drive!
There are acres of forest along the way with dead trees, remnants of many different forest fires that have struck the park over the years.
Even on our way up, we stopped for some neat overlooks. One old trail called "Knife's Edge" (a continuation of the trail in the picture) used to be an actual road carved into the side of a ridge! Sometimes cars fell off.
We were pretty high up!
After a stop at the visitor's center, we took the morning tour of Balcony House. This is one of the most exciting pueblos to visit because it involves climbing a 30+ foot ladder to get into the site, squeezing out through an 18-inch tunnel, and climbing back to the top via more ladders and handholds cut into the sheer cliff wall. The ancient Pueblo people didn't even have guard rails and chains to make the climb more safe, but even with those modern precautions the ascent is plenty terrifying. Byron, our tour guide, was witty, knowledgeable, and understanding of any misgivings for first-time visitors! Here he is explaining the uses of various native plants, including yucca (seen under his arm), prickly pear cactus, pĩñon pine, and spruce.
The alcoves that the dwellings are built into are natural formations, made by erosion of sandstone. Water seeps through the porous stone until it hits a bed of dense shale, where it is forced to flow laterally out of the cliff side. Over eons, it cuts out an overhang above the spring. This spring is one of two that supplied water to Balcony house, but it is greatly diminished by the addition of paved parking on the mesa top above the cliff.
Here's the infamous entry ladder!
And the balcony which gives the dwelling its name:
Before the actual tunnel, there are a couple of other crevices to fit through:
The tunnel is only a couple of feet high at either end, but actually has enough room to stand inside as you go through the passage.
And finally the ladders and rock wall to get out!
We got lunch and wandered around Spruce Tree house, which is one pueblo you can access without a guided tour.
In that site, they have reconstructed a kiva complete with roof and ladder down into the space that visitors can enter.
After driving back up to the visitor's center and getting tickets for another tour, we drove the Mesa Top Loop and checked out the archaeological sites and overlooks. The people who lived in these sites on top of the mesa settled there as early as 600 A.D., and moved down into the cliff faces by 1200 A.D. From one overlook, we could see as many as a dozen individual dwellings in the opposite cliff face, including Cliff Palace, the single largest dwelling in the park.
We caught an evening tour of Cliff Palace, with 150 rooms (dwelling and storage) and 23 kivas! One of the leading theories as to why the residents left these places is overpopulation. Even this site could only maintain about 100-120 individuals, and most sites were much smaller. The inability to support a growing population combined with a sustained drought in the later 1200s caused the family groups to seek better places to live, and there they stayed. While other native tribes that came into the area later knew about the dwellings, their religious beliefs prevented them from moving in and using the existing architecture (they were concerned that the spirits of the previous owners would give them too much trouble).
Existing rock falls that were too big to be cleared became part of the building!
Exiting cliff palace, we also got to see some more carved hand-and toe-holds that the original owners used to get to their farms on the mesa and back down. These folks were half farmer, half spiderman!
After a long day of climbing, hiking, and driving the mesa we had a cookfire dinner at our campground. I was very pleased to find that my s'mores-making skills honed in girl scout camp are preserved to this day (the goal is perfectly even caramelization - browned, never blackened - of the outside of the marshmallow and completely melted inside.) Our second night at the campground was perfectly quiet as our previous neighbors had already moved out!
We left early Sunday for the Grand Canyon via Monument Valley, which took us out of Colorado and through a corner of Utah on our way to Arizona (bypassing Four Corners, but we've now been through all of the relevant states and called it close enough.) Driving downhill out of the mesa was only marginally less terrifying than driving up, but Mike was a trooper and we kept the car in low gear the whole way.
We took lots of landscape and rock formation pictures along the highway. We saw Chimney Rock, which brought back some Oregon Trail memories from grade school:
Then we crossed the state line into Utah:
Where there was even more interesting geology to take in:
Some of them inside of Monument Valley proper even have whimsical descriptive names like "Mexican Hat,"
"Owl Rock,"
"El Capitan,"
and "Elephant Feet."
We stopped for lunch in a roadside pulloff (where a cow and calf stood and watched us from across the road - being a cow must be pretty boring).
For some reason Mike thought a photo of unshowered, car-rumpled me standing by the side of the highway eating a sandwich was required, so maybe the cows were on to something:
We also got our first taste of the summer "monsoons" in the southwest: fast, hard thunderstorms that can pour out water so fast that flash flooding is a real danger! The version we drove through was just a baby storm, and we could even tell when one cloud ended and the next began by changes in the intensity of the rainfall.
The rain cleared up as quickly as it appeared:
We made good time (and gained an hour again once we crossed out of Reservation lands and into National Park lands), arriving at Grand Canyon National Park (south rim) at around 2pm. We passed the Little Colorado River canyon on our way in, and could only imagine what a bigger gorge would look like!
Soon enough, we were able to see for ourselves. The size is absolutely mind-boggling. We stopped for our first view along the road in to the campground:
Here's a zoom shot to show the river:
We had a further adventure before even arriving at our campsite. A car was stopped along the road in front of us, and a ranger vehicle was parked facing the other way with flashing lights. One of the rangers was out of the vehicle, waving a cloth and trying to shoo away a huge elk buck that was right alongside the roadway!
It took off for the forest, but not before running towards us and passing us within a few feet of the car! For a minute I was afraid it would charge!
We set up camp:
And then we cooked dinner (chicken quesadillas this time), followed by a walk to the rim, heading along the Rim trail to stake out a place to watch the sunset. Cloud cover was thick above us but there was enough of a break to the west to make for a lovely view.
Mike was more than a little wary of my choice to leave the trail and sit on the rocks, but he came around eventually:
Little lizards on the rocks caught the last of the day's rays:
The time changes have been in our favor in terms of getting going in the morning, so we were breakfasted and at the trailhead ready for our exploration of the Canyon by 8am. Based on the description in the guide ("best views for a relatively short hike") we elected to descend via the South Kaibab trail. The intermediate day hike to Cedar Ridge is about 3 miles, 2-4 hours roundtrip (with a shorter 1.8-mile jaunt or longer 6-mile trek also recommended... hiking all the way down to the Colorado river, 13.6 miles via this route, is strongly discouraged as a single-day adventure). What "relatively short" doesn't cover is depth. This is one of the steepest trails, with a total descent of 1200ft just to our Cedar Ridge stopping point. We took our time going down, but it was cool and shady the whole way which was quite helpful.
Ready and raring to go:
Don't look down! The trail had 3 or 4 big sets of switchbacks to ease the descent, but it was still fairly steep at times:
Starting to get the hang of this, and grateful that my boots have good traction in dust and gravel:
Once we got over the sheer drop-off, there were indeed some really lovely views on the way down:
Almost there:
Proudly posing at Cedar Ridge:
We took in the view, including a couple of baby ground squirrels frolicking nearby:
We began our ascent at around 9:30am, and right around then the clouds broke and the sun finally started beating down with a vengeance... just in time for a steep uphill grade! While it was early enough in the day that parts of the trail were still well-shaded, we were glad for our early start and wished we'd gone in even sooner! With lots of water breaks and rest stops along the way, made our way back to the to the top. One of our stops was to make room for the ascent of a mule train:
At a few stops we were pestered by adult ground squirrels. One saw us eating granola bars and kept edging closer, at one point even sitting up and begging on its hind legs. Mike made some noise to scare it off, since it's not safe for these animals to lose timidity around humans. Another one left us alone, but I suspect it's been fed by hikers before because it's the fattest one we saw in the whole trip.
We finally emerged at the top around 11am. Dusty trails make dusty boots!
We both felt pretty good despite the strenuous hiking, so we decided to ride the shuttle the long way around to see more of Grand Canyon Village (including the train station where the trains still run daily from Williams, AZ). Unfortunately I began to feel a little under the weather as the bus ride wore on (we had to wait for the bus in full sun for about 15 minutes, and then when we got on the starts and stops began to get to me). I don't usually have to deal with motion-sickness, but what started out as hunger pangs and the start of a headache bloomed into nausea and fuzzy-headedness quickly... but not quickly enough to change our minds and get off the bus before it was on the westbound loop. I was able to hold it together until the stop at the entrance to the campground, but with another 15-minute walk to the campsite still to go I had enough and had to be sick. I plopped down on the ground to rest and had Mike run in to the campsite entry station to see if the rangers had crackers or chips, because as soon as my stomach was empty I had a major salt/carbs craving. One of the rangers came out to check on me (just in case it was serious) and Mike ran on ahead to get the car and come pick me up. Her knowledgeable diagnosis was electrolyte imbalance and a bit of hypoglycemia, which is apparently as much of a problem as dehydration in the park, since lots of people are concerned about increasing water intake but many don't think to increase food! We had brought a few granola bars and some jerky with us for the hike, but had finished them off on the climb and didn't have anything left by the time we got on the bus. My problems were addressed as soon as Mike arrived with a bag of tortilla chips. I felt much better immediately and we headed back to the campsite for a full lunch.
I've spent part of the afternoon in the cafeteria/lodge to check email and write this (and put up the previous post), which was perfect timing because an afternoon rainstorm rolled in right when I arrived. It's looking much clearer now, so our plans for another campfire/cookout are on! Tomorrow morning we leave to drive back to Albuquerque, via Flagstaff and more of Route 66. Between a full day's drive tomorrow and the next day to get back to Edmond, OK for my brother's wedding, I'm sure we'll be glad to return the car and let somebody else do the driving for a while!
