Goodbye Cortez....

Our last day in Cortez has been incredible. Last evening we went to Cortez Cultural Center to check out their museum and watch some Native
Indian dancing, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out that there would instead be an outdoor play, The Black Shaw. We enjoyed the play very much...it was a true story about an Navajo Indian baby who was orphaned when she was only days old and raised by white settlers, and it was performed by an actual descendant (great-granddaughter) of the subject of the play. I cried several times during the play as you could see that the woman performing it was not just acting, but speaking from her heart. Here's a few pics we took at the Cultural Center:



Today, we visited Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is famous for its ancient cliff dwellings. There are over 4,500 of these cliff houses in Mesa Verde, the oldest of them dating back to 900 AD! The entrance to Mesa Verde is only about 10 miles from where we are camping, but the Visitors Center is about 15 miles inside the park, just to give you an idea of how huge it is. The motorcycle ride once we got into the park was absolutely breathtaking. We just kept following the road up and up and up to around 8,000 feet.......all S curves and hairpin turns and most of the time NO GUARD RAILS. Chuck did a fabulous job on not very smooth, gravelly roads. We will both be experts on the bike by the time this trip is over......Chuck at driving and me at hanging on for dear life!! :-)


















It is impossible to even try to explain the things we saw today. These ancient Indians built their houses right on the sides of cliffs. It is unreal to me how they even got to them. We took lots of pics, but they do not even begin to show how steep these cliffs are, how deep the canyons below them are, or the workmanship that has stood the test of hundreds and hundreds of years. The largest of the cliff dwellings was called Cliff Palace. We actually climbed 100 feet down into it and were able to look into some of the rooms. In one of the rooms there was still an Indian painting on the wall. Unbelievable! Cliff Palace has over 100 rooms. It felt like you were walking around in someone's house. There were still signs of life there.....like blackened walls where their fire pits had been and even the grind stones where the women ground corn for flour. Then of course, what goes down, has to come back up. We had to climb the 100 feet back up, partly on narrow steps carved into the mountain and the rest of the way on wooden ladders. It was just a fabulous experience, one that we certainly will never forget. Here's some pics of Cliff Palace.