Wednesday, June 16, 2021

The campground at Cortez, Colorado was quiet and clean, and we decided to stay till Sunday.  There is lots to do in the area, and we had another incentive: Colorado is having its first heat advisory, ever!  It was well over 100 degrees F today – and we needed electricity to run our air conditioning.  It also cools down to about 55 at night.  Yes, that is a 45-degree difference.

Today we went to Mesa Verde National Park, a World Heritage Site that we had been to a few years ago, and not too far from the campground.  Convenience aside, we like Mesa Verde for what it preserves, for what it means to those who call the Puebloan people who lived there their ancestors, for the importance of honoring one’s heritage.

We decided to explore a part of the park that we had not been to before. A little way into the park we turned on to a 12-mile narrow, steep, and very winding road that offered spectacular views of the valley.  We were pleased that our van was able to stay on the road, Bill continually downshifting.

We stopped a number of times, most memorably at Point Lookout Trail, and walked to the fire tower, the highest point (at 8,427 feet) in Mesa Verde. Here we met the ranger who keeps an eye on current fires in the area. On a clear day, the views extend over 50 miles in some directions.

We drove as far as we could on the road, parked, and went on a self-guided tour of Step House in Wetherill Mesa, regarded as the quieter side of Mesa Verde (the more impressive cliff dwellings are on the other side, the Chapin Mesa).  It is a one-mile trail, down 200 feet and back up, that leads to Step House, another ancient Pueblo Indian village built into the side of a cliff.  In the same area, two parts of the village are preserved: one from approximately 550 CE and one from 1200 CE.  The differences in building materials and style were pointed out to us by rangers who were stationed there. 

It is interesting to note that although people come here to see the cliff dwellings, only 600 of the 4,500 archaeological sites at Mesa Verde are actually cliff dwellings.

The Pueblo Indians grew beans, corn, and squash, and supplemented their farming by gathering plants and hunting deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other animals.  A great deal of ancient corn was discovered here, for example – some of which has been left at the site, and it looks just like a corn cob.  

In the late 1200s, within the span of a generation or two, the Indians left their homes and moved away. 

Thursday, June 17, 2021

You generally don’t realize how much work goes into having fun.  We are just under two weeks before we return home and there are many things to take care of, so this morning we decided to check one off our list.  We arranged for our Covid-19 PCR tests in Las Vegas prior to our return flight home.

That taken care of, we decided to take a short trip to the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which encompasses 170,000 acres of desert in the southwest corner of Colorado.  Thousands of archaeological sites have been recorded, thousands more are waiting for documentation.

We stopped at the Anasazi Heritage Center (ancestral Puebloan) where we viewed an excellent display of artifacts of the Pueblo Indians who lived in this area. 

The one thing missing from the exhibit was any information on their music.  There was no mention of flutes, drums, dances, or songs.  We know that all Native American tribes had a wonderful culture of music, and songs were used to tell and pass on history and culture.  A definite loss in their presentation.

The humans who first entered the canyons area were hunters; eventually they turned to farming.  By 750 CE the farmers, now known as Puebloans, had occupied much of southwest Colorado.  Pit houses grew into masonry homes above ground.  Some were built at canyon heads and others were cliff dwellings.  Eventually – similar to Mesa Verde – the population moved to New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley, or even further away. 

There is no real solution to the mystery of why these areas were abandoned.  What happened to the culture that was thriving for over seven hundred years?   It is known that the many of the people moved to southwest New Mexico, but why?  There are many theories, mostly logical, but it is hard to believe that an entire population, spread throughout a huge area, just got up and left in a short period of time.  Even if resources were scarce, the climate changed, overcrowding, aggressive intruders, it seems that some groups of people would have stayed.  Though records were not kept, there are many petrographs that might give a hint as to what happened.  Many questions but no clues, complex or simple, remain – or maybe they are just yet to be found. 

Modern day descendants often return to these ancient dwellings as they regard them as holy places where the spirits of their ancestors remain.  They come to hold religious ceremonies and festivals in the ruins.  They claim that they have never truly left.

On the way back to the campground, we stopped at an American Indian souvenir store called a trading post; they trade their product for your dollars.  Though we had stopped there on our previous trip to the area and enjoyed it, this time around it was very disappointing as none of the salespeople seemed to have any knowledge of their products.

3:00 pm and we tried to get back to the campground.  But there was road construction directly in front of the campground entrance, so off we went to Walmart for an hour and a half.  We returned to find that the road was still closed and we waited in a parking lot down the road with other campers also trying to get into the campground.  We made ourselves dinner as we waited.  Patience won out as we finally made it back around 5:30 pm.

A plus about being in this campground is the surrounding scenery.  The view outside our windows is of mountains so picturesque that you would think they were painted on a canvas as the backdrop for a quality stage production.

Friday, June 18, 2021

As we sit outside the van in the shade, enjoying the environment, we write this portion of the blog.  It is always nice to take some time, slow down, and gather your thoughts.  There is nowhere we want to go today and no shopping to be done, but laundry calls, Shabbat preparations to be made.