Mesa Verde, Colorado

Such an interesting National Park. Lots of history and some neat views of the ruins. Many pit houses and cliff dwellings. I would highly recommend booking a tour of a cliff dwelling. We weren’t so lucky. You have to book online at 8 am, exactly 2 weeks in advance. I missed it by a day and looked daily for openings with no luck. They no longer take day of reservations for tours, everything is done online…pretty disappointing. A guided tour is the only way to see the ruins up close. There are no more self-guided tours at Spruce Tree House. I does look like they have plans to renovate it in the future, so I really hope that happens.

Also, summer of 2023 the park was doing road work. We were only able to see half of the park. We tried to make the most of our time at Mesa Verde even though we were unable to see the whole park and also missed out on a guided tour.

Views from the Overlooks

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​Petroglyph Point Hike
This was a really fun hike. It was advertised as strenuous, and it was. You could walk just the top half to climb down to see the petroglyphs and go back, but I would suggest doing the whole thing. It was a beautiful hike!

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Dark Sky Park

We stayed at many dark sky parks on this trip, but Mesa Verde was the best view of the stars due to a full moon at the other parks. I never figured out how to take a night sky photo with our Cannon camera, so my iPhone is all I could get!