We switched very quickly from cold nights and warmest days, to COLD, freezing nights and cold days. Mesa Verde NP opened a week before we got there, and the private RV just 3 days before we got there. It snowed the night before we left New Mexico but the roads to the park were fine. The entire park is over 8000 feet in elevation so along with the cold, no oxygen. Made for an interesting visit! We saw a lot of pronghorn and prairie dogs along the roadside. And we saw 2 different Bald eagles- one in New Mexico and one in Colorado. Too cool!
We had electricity in the park so we kept the kitchen hot water heater on and used our small heater in the bathroom to keep the pipes from freezing. It went well below 30F every night. One night the wind was blowing quite hard so the wind chill was about 18F! But it was so nice to see real trees, coniferous trees and have a mountain feel after all the deserts. I’m obviously not a desert girl. I find it intriguing but give me the mountains or oceans any day!
Mesa Verde NP is beautiful but what it is known for are Pueblo dwellings. The native peoples started occupying this region about 1000 AD and some artifacts are that old! It was hard to understand exactly how they could live in pit dwellings until we really got to see one at the museum. The Museum of the Ancients in Cortez ranks as one of the very best we’ve been to visit. We are really lucky to have found quite a few great museums on this trip. The main drive is about 6 miles long and arranged sort of in order from oldest to most recent (which is still hundreds of years old!). Luckily, most of the walks to the preserved dwellings were short and paved. We did two longer ones which were still not that long, but man, NO OXYGEN! Phew, I never realized that the altitude sickness I had when I was 11 years old would continue to plague me forever. But, I did it and I survived!
Another place that we happened upon accidentally was the National Museum of the Ancients in Cortez, Co. What an awesome place it was. Informative and with absolutely amazing displays. I learned more there about the Pueblo peoples than all the places we went into for both Mesa Verde and Bandelier combined. From there we were sent about 20 minutes away to an actual 1000 year old Dwelling at Lowry Pueblo. You could actually walk through the dwelling it self and see how things might have been. One thing I was surprised to learn was that anthropologists purposefully refilled many of these so that the stones are protected from the elements. I was also happy to get back into my warm car and get to drive around rather than walk 10 miles a day!!
