Category: Colorado

While I had enjoyed our hikes on the previous day, I was really looking forward to our one full day in Mesa Verde. I remember seeing a photo in an old Encyclopedia Britannica when I was little of these amazing looking cliff dwellings. This was of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the United States. From that day on, I'd always dreamed of visiting and on this morning we had a  reservation with the first tour of Cliff Palace.

I got up early and then headed on down the road a bit to Far View Terrace. At the time of our visit, this was the only place open in the morning and for lunch. It's a total Food Court-ish set-up. Anyway, I got some (really bad) coffee and (even worse) pastries for breakfast. We should have stuck with the buts and beef jerky we packed!

After returning to our room we headed on out. The lack of Wifi was driving the Missus nuts, so I thought it would probably be best to hit the road. We got to the parking lot on Mesa Top Ruins Road; there was still quite a few open parking spaces. This is one of benefits of staying in the park, you can get to things fairly early.

We wandered around a bit, then headed on over to the meeting area for our tour and waited for our assigned ranger.

We then headed down to the staging area, where I got all excited when I saw the view…..

 There it was, Cliff Palace, I was actually here! Our Ranger was just like all the rest, so knowledgeable, first going over the safety protocols, we'd be using ladders to ascend….five in total. There were a couple of folks that struggled a bit, but for us it was pretty easy.

It is said that Cliff Palace was the "social center" of the collective Mesa Verde communities and was occupied, based on tree ring dating from 1190 – 1260CE. We were told that there are 150 rooms in the dwelling and 23 Kivas in total.

The amount of kivas support the theory that Cliff Palace was the social center for the area.

We were told that the structures were made of sandstone, mortar, and wooden beams.

If you look up, you can see where you started from….

We loved visiting here. It was something I had on my "bucket list" since "small kid time".

Once we were done, we headed back up Mesa Top Ruins Road, then took a right and parked near Soda Canyon Overlook Trail. The trail was quite easy with some nice viewpoints.

And an especially great view of Balcony House.

Once back at the car, the Missus was itching to do some "real hiking", so we headed on over to where Spruce Tree Terrace is located and parked. Here we broke out the nuts and beef jerky we packed and had lunch.

We then ambled over to the Spruce Treehouse Trail where there are two other trails; the Petroglyph Point and the Spruce Canyon trails.

  Petroglyph Point was the more interesting of the two and also the more strenuous. There were several tight squeezes, a couple of drops and some variations in terrain as well. The Missus was loving it.

There are some nice views along the way.

    And truth be told, I was actually enjoying this trail. All the changes in terrain and views kept me visually stimulated.

As for the petroglyphs? Well, don't blink or else you'll miss it. It's along one small fenced off area.

From here it was a hike uphill where we ended up back near the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum.

We took a short breather, then headed back down and took the Spruce Canyon Trail. 

 I thought this trail was easier than Petroglyph Point, but also less interesting. It was quite peaceful as we did not see another soul during our hike.

Again we ventured into a canyon, then did the hike uphill and ended up in a back parking lot? We eventually found our way back to the Spruce Tree Terrace and our vehicle.

At this point, I figured that the Missus's hiking requests for the day had been paid in full. It was time to head on back to the Far View Lodge to relax for a bit. 

When the subject of dinner came up; well, I didn't make reservations for the Metate Room on this evening. Instead, I noticed that the bar on the second floor of the Lodge served the salads we had enjoyed the night before along with simpler items. This sounded like a better alternative to us, so we headed on over. The place was much more casual and the service was much better.

And the salads came out quickly and were even better than the day before! 

I really liked the combination of the Ancient Grain mix with the milky-salty Parmesan and Sun Dried Tomato Vinaigrette ($10.75).

Though they were still out of pistachios for the Strawberry & Pistachio ($14) salad.

While they didn't have any entrees on the menu, there was a collection of sandwiches and burgers available. The Missus and I decided to split the Short Rib Grilled Cheese ($13.50).

 While the SYSCO crinkle cut fries weren't fried very well and quite soggy, the sandwich was not bad. The bread could have been toasted a bit more, but I liked the fact that they used Parmesan Texas Toast, which had a nice salty-buttery-milkiness. The short ribs were tender and beefy, loved the caramelized onions, and the cheese, which was a Boursin was herbaceous and nice and gooey. This was nice to share.

We found that prices in Mesa Verde where a lot cheaper than in other National Parks.

All in all, we enjoyed eating here than in the more fancy Metate Room. 

Far View Lounge (In the Far View Lodge)
Mile Marker 15
Mesa Verde National Park, CO 81330

We had enjoyed visiting Mesa Verde, but I could tell that the Missus was ready to move on. It was time to head on out!

Stay Tuned!

After hiking both the Point Lookout and Knife Edge Trails, we decided to head on down to the Wetherill Mesa area which is only open between certain months of the year. Along the way we stopped at the Park Point Overlook. There's a short paved trail to the highest point in Mesa Verde and the view is wonderful here.

This is where we saw the most people on this day.

The Park Point Fire Lookout stands at the highest point.

And it's still in use today. In fact, there's this interesting photo in the window of the lookout.

   And then we took the long and winding drive down to Wetherill Mesa and easily found parking in the lot.

We decided to do the self-guided tour of the Step House. You basically go down a couple of switchbacks and then take a ladder down to the amazing dwellings! There is a Ranger on duty to answer questions and the area is only open when manned by a Ranger.

This dwelling was populated twice, the first set of inhabitants are called the Modified Basketmakers who settled here around 600 CE. The second set was during the Pueblo III period.

This was an amazing site!

You can tell the difference in the structures of the Basketmakers……

Versus the masonry structures of the Pueblo people.

  You can pretty much linger as long as you want. 

We decided to not do the Long House Tour since we'd be doing Cliff Palace the next day. 

We had lunch in the parking lot. The Missus ate an entire mini-watermelon and we had a couple of terrible tamales from the motel.

We headed then back and then down toward Chapin Mesa. We decided to make a stop at the Far View Sites. This is a rather unique site as it sits at the top of a mesa rather than in an alcove.

Apparently, there were close to 50 villages in this half mile area between 900 and 1300AD.

While the sites, like the Far View House above, which is thought to be the center of the community or the Pipe Shrine House below are quite stunning. I'm guessing folks are expecting those dramatic alcove settlements, which is why we saw no one here, in spite of the easy access.

We then headed further down to Chapin Mesa and made a stop at Spruce Tree Terrace. While both the Chapin Archaeological Museum and Spruce Tree House are were closed the view was…..well, let me say it again, amazing!

We'd stop by again to do a couple of hikes here the following day.

By now, it was getting close to check-in time at our accommodations. We were staying in Mesa Verde at the Far View Lodge, pretty much the only non-camping hotel within Mesa Verde. Of course, after staying at a bunch of these places we knew what to expect; no fridge, definitely no microwave, they wanted to make their money off of you. And while we'd had our own experiences with what we call "National Park cuisine", there were limited options in Mesa Verde. Yet, I'd heard that the offerings at what was described as "Mesa Verde's fine dining restaurant" were pretty good. So I made reservations for this evening.

It's located in the same structure as the hotel check-in and gift shop.

After looking over the menu, we decided to stick with appetizers and salads. And after doing so much hiking, a nice salad sounded good! When we arrived the place was half full and yet the staff seemed to be in the weeds for our entire meal….which took over 2 1/2 hours!

We started off with the "Korean BBQ Chicken Wings". This was the first item out, it took an hour to get to our table.

A basic Cho-jang style sauce, overly sweet, the coating mushy, and worst of all, I think this was refry job since the flesh of the wings, while fully cooked, was cold!

The flavors on the Roasted Mushroom Flatbread wasn't too bad. 

Decent earthy flavors, the arugula a nice foil for the mushrooms and boursin. But that crust was so doughy, like it hadn't been baked long enough.

And while we waited another 45 minutes for our salads, they would be the best items we had.

The Strawberry – Pistachio Salad was quite refreshing.

Though it had no pistachios wince they had run out, so they subbed sunflower seeds, which did just fine. The balsamic dressing added a sweet-acidity, and the greens were very fresh.

I really enjoyed the Ancient Grain Salad.

All the textures and nutty-earthiness of the Ancient Grain mix, cucumbers, sweet carrots, pickled red onions, and salty-savory parmesan cheese did well with the sun dried tomato dressing.

Service was really s-l-o-w, but when it comes down to it; this might be the best "National Park meal" we've had. And the view wasn't too shabby.

Metate Room
Mile Marker 15, 6262 Far View Mesa Verde National Park
Colorado 81330

And here's the sunset from our balcony…..

Which made it all worth while.