Friday, September 10, 2010

Mesa Verde!


This year for the Gebs' family reunion Tawnee and Dan planned a wonderful weekend at the amazing Mesa Verde National Park. If you have never been here, it's well worth the visit. It's
amazing to go into the cliff dwellings that are thousands of years old. Getting into them was a lot of fun too! You have to climb huge ladders, crawl through crevices, go up and down steep stairs and walk along a 12 inch wide switch back up the steepest narrowest cliff I have ever experienced. It was such a new adventure! We all had a really great time!


Brandon was chosen as a "Jr. Ranger". He lead us along the first tour we took to Cliff Palace and the Ranger brought up the rear.


These are pictures of Cliff Palace. We also visited Balcony House (my favorite), Spruce Tree House, and Long House


This is the stairway we crawled through to get out of Cliff Palace. Pretty steep with a steep ladder at the end to finally get back up on ground.


Here we are scaling the 32 foot ladder to get into Balcony House. This one was my favorite. It was the steepest and most adventurous. It also had the best story I think. There was a spring coming right out of the rock into this dwelling. A severe drought came into the area making it necessary for those who lived here to defend it. They did so by creating all these crawl spaces you had to go through in order to get to the spring. Our ranger told us they believed they would just wait there for people to try and come in through the little caverns and they would just kill them. There's a "murder hole" in the balcony house where they tossed the bodies of people who died trying to get water. It's crazy! It made me grateful for my running water in my own home.


Brandon always pulls this weird face whenever I ask him to smile. It's really quite annoying. This is taken outside one of the rooms in Balcony House.


This is the switchback against the cliff coming out of Balcony House. I don't do many things like this so for me, it was such an adrenaline rush! And Brandon started yelling ad screaming "That was AWESOME!" when we reached the top.



Lindsay climbing out of the "kitchen" room in the Spruce Tree House. It was actually a really pretty shot, though I didn't do it justice. We were in the dark and there was a ray of light coming through the ceiling shining right on my girl. Maybe with some doctoring we can get it looking good?


This is one of my favorite pictures. It was a long day for poor Sophie who wasn't getting very much sleep. Before every tour begins, the ranger tells everyone to spit out their gum, keep any snacks in your pack and only to drink water. Well, we let Sophie gnaw on a piece of licorice just for the silence it offered. Whenever a Ranger came we'd just hurry and turn her away or take the licorice and hide it. You can see how much she like it!

It was a fun trip! We'll be going again someday!

3 comments:

egebs said...

Looks like you have been having lots of fun. I can't believe how big all your kids are. Lindsey looks so cute. Hope to see you soon.

Steph said...

How fun! My family went there 2 years in a row for our summer vacation when i was a kid because we loved it so much! Back then, you were pretty much allowed to roam everything on your own. The tours would be interesting, though. You may have inspired me to take my kids soon!

Melissa said...

What a neat location! Will have to keep that in mind.