Mesa Verde NP - our first
National Park! This is about 1 hr from Durango and close to the
Utah border, so it was on our way to Moab. We did our morning hike
in Durango then hiked around the cliff dwellings of this incredible park
in the afternoon. The dwellings are built into alcoves in the
cliffs 1000'+ above the valley floor (you can see the mesa to the
left). The kivas are places of worship built into the floor of the
little colony (stairs into kiva below).
Petroglyph Point - our first experience with the rock art that is so
common in the Southwest. It's very interesting to learn the
ancient Indian symbols and 'transcribe' their stories. This
particular one tells how the ancestral Indians came from the Grand
Canyon and settled here.
