Mesa Verde

We traveled only about 50 miles from Durango to Mesa Verde.  Hiawatha and I were on the parking crew so we had to depart Durango at 8:00 am.    We arrived at Mesa Verde and hurried up and got our rigs parked so that we could tell all the other units where to park.

Once everyone parked we boarded the tour buses for a trip to the Balcony House!  We were warned about the balcony house.  We had to go down 132 feet to access the ancient house under the cliff.  It was awesome to realize that people lived here from around 1200 AD.  Unfortunately, what goes down, must go back up.  If you are afraid of heights it is a nightmare.  We had to climb up 2 ladders that were over 30 feet; one which led to a rock face with 30 more feet of climbing on foot holds.  It was terrifying; and once you start on the tour you cannot turn back.  There are also tunnels to climb through. One tunnel was only 18 inches.  It was 12 feet long.  Needless to say, for someone like Hiawatha, who has claustrophobia it was a nightmare; but he made it.  We would not do this again

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Nightmares from Mesa Verde....the rest of the park was awesome.  There are lots of pueblos here, unfortunately Balcony house was the only one open while were there.  And, just our luck, the others are much easier to access.