Wednesday, April 12th,
day two of our adventure was a fun one.
We had a very nice continental breakfast at the hotel that morning.
Tom and I had ran to Walmart after the kids went to bed the night before and bought some food for lunches. I washed strawberries in the bathroom sink, and we made PB&J sandwiches on the entertainment center. We are all about saving money on trips by having free breakfast and simple lunches.
Today we headed to Mesa Verde National Park. It's only a few minutes from Cortez, and it was nice to not be in the car as long... so we thought.
We first stopped at the gift shop. The kids had fun looking at everything while Tom inquired about tickets to tour one of the ancient dwellings. We didn't realize we should've gotten tickets in advance for the tour and lucked out getting some for the last tour of the day. Since it was only about 11:00am, and the tour wasn't until 4:00pm, we had a lot of time to kill.
The man at the gift shop gave us a map and told us it takes about an hour to drive up to the ruins, plus there's a lot of look-out points to stop at along the way. Knowing we had a lot of time to kill, we leisurely stopped at the look-outs as we drove up the mountain. Jeff wasn't too excited about spending the whole day driving just to look at the view of the valley from several different viewpoints. The other kids enjoyed it though.
I did fall asleep at one point and stayed in the car while the others went to another look-out. When I woke up, I saw a man walking along that looked a lot like my dad (it obviously wasn't him).
At one of the look-outs we decided to eat our picnic lunch. Jeff just ate in the car.
Then we finally made it to one of the main attractions. There was a video explaining everything we were seeing, a little museum and a breath-taking view of the cliff dwellings across the way. Jeff was a little happier here.
Pictures don't do justice, but it was amazing to see these places the Native Americans had built, hundreds of years ago.
It was a little nerve-racking to have my four babies so close to the cliff (this picture looks like they're right on the edge of the cliff, but it was a little safer than it appears).
At one point, the kids went over by an ancient wall. the bricks had been placed like steps to help hold the wall up. It's hard to see from the picture, but the cliff was right below these "steps" and dropped hundreds of feet down. Lily thought the "steps" looked like a fun place to explore, but Tom and I quickly explained how they were not steps and how dangerous climbing out on them would be. The kids went and explored an old tree and the hill behind instead.
It was getting close to the time where we had to meet our tour group for our tour, so we hurried on. Unfortunately, there was a lot more interesting sites to see at the top than we anticipated. We felt bad that we wasted so much time at the look-out spots and had to rush through these other neat sights. Some as old as 500AD.
We made it to our tour on time and had an old Native American tour-guide explain what we would be doing. We were going to be touring the Balcony House. In order to get there we had to climb a 32 step ladder. Jeff was eager to go.
The ladder was a little intimidating and I made sure to stay right behind Sophie. Tom stayed right behind Cedric.
Here's the view from the top of the ladder looking down.
We crawled through a little tunnel and up another ladder.
We first stopped in an area at the top of the ladder while our tour guide talked about it for a bit. That's when Cedric sneezed a huge sneeze and got boogers all over his arm! We didn't have any sort of tissue on us, and I even asked someone nearby if they had one. But since we couldn't find one, Tom used a long receipt from his pocket to clean Cedric up.
It was amazing to see how detailed these places were. Especially considering how many years ago they were built, and on the side of a cliff none-the-less.
Our tour guide was nice, but loved to talk. The tour was supposed to be done by 5:00, but he seemed to be taking his time to explain everything. Poor Sophie was having a hard time. First she said she was cold (it was quite cool up there), then she said she had to use the bathroom.
We'd all used the bathroom before we started the tour so I told her that she'll just have to wait and that there were no bathrooms here. That just made her whine worse, and it got to the point that she was becoming quite loud and disruptive. So I took her a few feet away from the group and had a serious talk. I told her we couldn't leave without the tour guide and she couldn't pee on any of these ancient ruins. So her only options were to hold it, or pee her pants. That just made her more emotional. In fact, even the tour guide noticed us and stopped talking to ask what was the matter. Tom explained it was a bathroom need, so the tour guide excused himself from the tour group and came over to Sophie and I. He explained that if we crawled through the tunnel, there'd be some bushes and such on the other side where she could relieve herself. So Sophie and I did as he suggested and crawled through the tunnel. Sure enough, there was a little bit of trees and bushes right next to the ruins. There was a tree growing out of the cliff sideways, so I had Sophie sit on that as if it was a toilet. Afterwards she was much happier. I got a picture of her in front of the tunnel before we crawled back through and joined the group.
The tour guide was still talking and even pulled out his recorder to play us a song. We snuck away for a minute and got a family picture. Needless to say, we didn't catch much of what was said on that tour.
Finally he was done and led us all through the tunnel to the last ladder. I was a little embarrassed because of Sophie's bathroom fiasco, and there was a puddle right at the bottom of the ladder. It wasn't from Sophie, but I worried people might think it was.
There were also some steps carved into the rock. I tried to get a picture, but I was also trying to keep moving and not fall too.
We finally made it to the top. You can see how far down the cliff goes! It was an amazing sight!
We drove back down the mountain and drove into a nearby town. I'd found a pizza place online that had good reviews (it was connected to a grocery store), so we stopped there. Tom had a bad headache, and the pizza took a while. But they gave us free drinks and the food was great! Tom's headache also went away after some medicine and food.
We made it back to the hotel and let the kids swim again before bed.
It felt nice to sit in the hot tub after our long day.
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