Mesa Verde drive

After the hike, we finished the park by driving from site to site to check out all the different types of archeological sites from the Pueblo people. They are amazing and intimidating and beautiful. They range from pithouses that were partially dug into the ground to these cliff dwellings that housed 80 people and they reached by ladder and cutouts in the rock. Absolutely mind blowing!

Mesa Verde hike

Mesa Verde was an awesome park! A perfect place for our first hike of the trip. It was good for family's skill level and interest (a little bit dangerous, but not really, lots of rock scrambling).
Pics are backwards from the actual hike, oops.

There are tons of these staircases cut into the rock.

Say neigh neigh to horse play

Check out our neighbors! Just about 50 feet from our RV, we have these sweet peas. Laura and I talked and petted 3 of them, but I forgot to get a good pic because I was so engrossed. I'll try for more tomorrow. The baby is in a pen with a higher double fence, so no greeting there, but that's probably a really good idea.  But she was running around crazy for a bit and wearing out her mom. So sweet when it's not yours!

On to Mesa Verde

We headed out towards Mesa Verde Natl Park (still in Colorado) like a herd of turtles. 

 On the way - a grocery stop and a Walmart stop and a scenic overlook.

Mid afternoon, we rolled into an RV park just at the entrance to the national park. We're doing good with social distancing, as you can see!

We spent the afternoon and evening swimming, doing laundry (much needed!) and making and eating chicken fajita/nacho dinner. 

And what the heck are these? 

Back to the dunes

After chill time, the plan was to go to a nearby waterfall that was supposed to be fun to scamper about. But when we got there, there was a 3 mile road that was the roughest road I've ever seen. Jagged big rocks sticking straight up all over as far as the eye can see. We tried just a bit, but Appa the RV wasn't doing so well. It was the first time he didn't come thru for us, so we gave him a break and went back to the dunes and played in the remnants of the spring creek before you actually get to the dunes. This was Casper fun at it's max-art, engineering, mud, splashing.

I went back to the RV to start dinner: Mac n cheese, applesauce, salad, and microwaved stromboli. Dinner in the parking lot (and Adam took a shower),  then back to the RV park nearby for more showers, games, biking and gazing at the dunes. So glad we came!