Now I don’t know how many people have ever woken up inside
of a national park, but I would recommend putting it on the bucket list. Up in
the mountains it had been a bit too chilly for me. Out there on the edge of the
canyon I woke in weather that I felt comfortable going around in a t-shirt
with. (That’s really saying something for a guy who needs four layers to go out
in 32° weather.) It was a beautiful sight to see and hear in the morning as
well: the crashing of the river several hundred feet below with great dark rock
rising out of it.
I took the first hour of the day to admire the highly
underappreciated canyon before heading on to complete my collection of the four
National Parks in Colorado. This meant driving for another four and a half
hours down to Mesa Verde National Park. This drive included a winding road that
was one of the best drives I have ever taken. If my memory serves me correctly
(which, quite honestly, is a long shot—I hardly ever trust my memory myself, so
I would encourage you to approach it with the same trepidation) it was Colorado
Highway 92. The curves were beautiful hairpins with hills ascending and
descending. I got to really slam through all of the gears in my little Honda
CR-V. This is a rarity because I am already up into fifth gear by 35 miles per
hour. Honestly, there is hardly any horsepower in that little engine. Still
love it though.
After the 4.5 hours of driving I managed to pull into the park around 3:30, but I had no idea how huge the park was. It was a
30 mile drive in to get to the hike that I wanted to go on. That was about an
hour of driving just to get to the trailhead. Not to mention that I was only 40
miles from hitting 400 miles on my tank, which is much further than I’ve gone
on a single take before, but I was not about to turn around and go back five
miles down the road to fill up my tank. That would take even more time, and all
the sky around the park was already looking dark and ominous. In I drove,
taking advantage of every downhill—riding it with my foot on the clutch—which made
my approach to some of the hair pin turns a bit faster than they should have
been in an SUV. Still, I made it alive and that is all that matters.
Usually Mesa Verde is one of the more crowded parks, so I
was expecting a huge crowd of people, but instead there was hardly anyone there
when I arrived. One of the park rangers told me that things die down during
August for some bizarre reason. Because apparently it all picks back up again
in September when a whole bunch of tourist groups start coming by in bus loads.
But in August things are slow. So I got two National Parks almost all too
myself, at least there were no other people on the trail with me so I got to
take my time reading the signs and learning about the different parts of the
architecture. Most people think of the cliff dwellings when they hear about
Mesa Verde National Park, but before the natives ever lived on the face of the
cliffs they just lived on the top of the mesas. Which is what I saw first. The
best part are the Kivas.
I can’t help but imagine Native Americans tripping out on
something while holding religious rituals inside of these earthen pits. The
interesting thing is that they were most common during the older generations
and later generations just filled them in, sometimes even using them to dump trash
in. There’s one way to really rebel against the faith of your fathers.
After touring the ruins on top of the mesa I went to check
out the cliff dwellings, and honestly that is where the real excitement lies.
Look at those places! Who gets it in their head that just
living on top of flat ground doesn’t sound exciting anymore. They were probably
all sitting in the Kiva passing the peace pipe and one guy just said, “Ever see
those holes in the cliffs around here?”
“Yeah man, those look pretty cool.”
“Wouldn’t it be awesome to put one of these Kivas in one of
those holes?”
“Dude, that would be sweet! It would be like underground,
but also above ground, and then there would be this epic drop right outside of
the door. And then only cool people who can climb like bosses could get in
there.”
“Totally! We should definitely do that man. Then we wouldn’t
have to have around all the old and sick people and the women and children while
we were hanging out and smoking the peace pipe.”
And then they made the kiva and then the women, children,
and sick people started just busting up the party and then they just decided, “Heck,
if everyone is going to keep on coming down here to bug us we might as well
build the entire town into the cliff.” There, that is my story of how and why
the cliff dwellings came to be. There were no wars or anything like that, just
a few guys trying to get some guy time, failing, and then everyone moving in
because they all thought it was pretty cool.
Personally I would not have been one of the cool people who
would be capable of making it to the Kiva. Good ol’ Darwin would have snatched
me out of that gene pool in a second. I preferred snapping pictures from afar.
And after my pictures I managed to get my car back out of the park and to the
gas pump without the fuel light coming on. Then I continued driving until I got
into Durango and pulled my car over into a Walmart parking lot where I slept the night
after spoiling myself and buying some doughnuts, a sandwich, and a Lunchable.
That is getting spoiled when compared to just eating packets of salmon
or tuna along with a can of beans occasionally.
Next morning I woke up with a text from my Mom telling me
that my little sister needed to see me update my blog, so I went and spent the
morning getting a blog post written and pictures uploaded at the public library (the Durango library is a bumpin' place) before going and
taking a ten-mile hike. This hike started at a random pull off on the side of the road. I saw a sign that said trailhead, and the way I am with constantly craving a hike I
decided to pull over and give it a look. Turned out it was supposed to be a
mountain biking trail, but I went hiking on it any way. Something tells me that
mountain bikers hate having people just hiking on the trails—just an extra
obstacle you have to watch out for and all. Still, I didn’t much care, it was a beautiful
day that was just begging me to go hiking during it. And so I wandered around
for about 4 hours. Found some good lookout points too.
It was a huge system of trails, which made the sign at the
foot of the trail a liar, because it claimed that it was just a single loop,
but the map up the trail a ways said quite differently. The red is the route I
ended up taking.
After the hike it was back to more driving. Right as the sun
was setting I ended up just pulling up a random road that claimed to be National
Forest access. I found a nice overlook where I could watch the sunset and then
I kicked back and smoked a very nice cigar while the sun fell behind the
mountains. It was the perfect end to the evening, and almost an end to all of
my adventures by myself. The next day I would just end up driving home, but not
before waking up and finding giant elk hoof prints going around my car.
Apparently something about my car got it’s attention, or maybe I was just
snoring way too loud and it showed up to see if it could shut me up. Whatever
the case, those were definitely some giant hoof prints.
And so my lonesome wanderings came to an end. Stay tuned for
the post going up tomorrow about the beginning of the wanderings of the 3 Men
on the Bummel.
