Day 9: Mesa Verde

Lydia and I decided to take a day off from hard physical activity and do some sightseeing in Mesa Verde N.P. Mesa Verde is home to some of the best preserved and largest cliff dwellings in the world. Most of the largest dwellings can be seen by guided tour only, so we scheduled two tours, one to the Balcony House, dubbed the adventure tour, and one to the Cliff Palace, the largest of the dwellings. While we waited for our tours to begin, we first visited the Spruce House. Here's an overview of the spruce house.

This particular dwelling has a restored Kiva, which is an underground room which a family will use as a living room or a temple, depending on who you ask. Here's Lydia entering the Kiva.

The next dwelling we visited was the Balcony House. To access this dwelling, we had to climb a 30' wooden ladder. Here I am checking out this dwelling.The final dwelling we visited was the most famous, the cliff palace. Here's a very famous view of the Cliff Palace. The round structure the group is standing around is a Kiva, without the
restored roof like the one Lydia is climbing in. After touring the Cliff Palace, we loaded up and headed to Moab for some good mountain biking on the slick rock.