day 13 - cortez, co to holbrook, az

First thing in the morning, we were off to Mesa Verde National Park to see the cliff dwellings built by ancestral Puebloans.

The drive up to Mesa Verde is pretty nice, offering some valley views of the surrounding area.

One we were there, we discovered that many of the tours had already been booked up through noon - it was very crowded. So we decided to go see Spruce Tree House, which is the park's best-preserved dwelling and the only one that you can actually enter on your own (this is only OK in the summer - in the winter, they do guided tours of it). The trail to Spruce Tree House starts at the back of the park's museum, so we went in and learned about the life of ancestral Puebloans. Apparently they farmed the top of the mesas for corn and beans, and were skilled basketmakers and later potters.

The dwelling is nestled in a cool, shaded alcove in the side of the canyon. It's got several rooms as well as some entrances into kivas, or underground spaces that were probably used for prayer.

Kiva entrance

After Spruce Tree House, we went on a drive to check out some of the other structures.

Cliff Palace is the largest of the dwellings and only visitable on a tour, but we got a nice shot of it from a cliff.
Square Tower House has a 4-story tower right in the middle.


Sun Temple was probably built for gatherings, but was apparently never completed before the ancestral Puebloans decided to abandon their cliff dwellings in 1300 AD.



After the drive, we decided we were pretty much done with cliff dwellings (they were cool, but had pretty much all looked the same) and drove back into Cortez to have lunch at Sonic. There, this fat little prairie dog came around begging for food so we fed it some fries.

Then we attempted to begin the drive to Grand Canyon, but we lost our cellular data service somewhere along the road and almost immediately got lost in Navajo Nation.

While wandering around Navajo Nation, we realized that there were animals freely grazing on the side of the road, with no fences to keep them in. Apparently animals are allowed to just roam around there, sometimes posing a danger to cars. We saw goats, sheep, horses, cows, and several dogs just hanging out right off the road.




Our unexpected detour was making us a little late, so we decided to make a stop for the night in Holbrook, AZ, right next to Petrified Forest National Park, which we planned to explore in the morning. The entire park essentially consists of a 23-mile scenic drive, so we figured it was a good, quick way to knock another park off our list while seeing some new things.

We had dinner at Jerry's, a local diner, and then holed up for the night at a local Comfort Inn (a chain that is quickly becoming our favorite).