Telluride, CO

 

 

Cayton Campground is about 20 miles from Telluride, so since it was another rainy day we went for a ride. Plus it was a good excuse to find an internet connection. Telluride is an old mining town, but is now known for it’s ski resort. It’s a pretty nice summer destination as well, with lots of opportunities for hiking and mountain biking. Some interesting history, In June 1889, Butch Cassidy robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride. This was his first major recorded crime. He exited the bank with $24,580, and later became famous as a bank robber.

We drove to the end of town to look at Bridal Veil Falls. I’ve lost count of how many falls named Bridal Veil we’ve seen over the years. This was a big one, 365 feet, the highest cascade waterfalls in Colorado. What made it even more interesting is the private house/power plant that sits beside it. Quite an extreme home. You can hike a 4 mile trail or drive a rocky dirt road to get there.

 

Debbie and I also took a ride on the free gondola from the ski village down into town. Since it was enclosed I figured I could handle it. Other than the initial speed and coming to a complete stop for a couple minutes while we were in the air, it wasn’t too bad.  And what views. Too bad it was drizzling.

We found another nice microbrewery, lunch and WiFi at Smuggler Joes. And on the way home the sun actually came out! It was a good day.

 

Cayton Campground, Rico, CO

 

It was a beautiful drive along the Dolores River to Cayton Campground, a San Juan National Forest Service campground about 20 miles south of Telluride. Since rain was predicted in the afternoon, we got an early start and arrived before noon. The rain didn’t wait, though, and we had drizzle and clouds most of the way. We wanted cooler weather and we sure found it. It was only 52 degrees when we arrived here at elevation 9200’.

Many of the sites are on reservation, but we got lucky again and got two of the last open sites. We actually have electric (we were surprised the sites without power were full) and there are non-threaded water spigots. There is a “dry dump” (no water) but it costs $10 even if you are camping here. We are paying $13.50 with the senior pass ($22 without).

Our sites are right next to a stream, but the downside is the sound of the rushing water doesn’t drown out the road noise from Hwy 145, just above the campground.

This is just behind our site.

And the road is behind the power pole. 

Since there is no phone or internet here, we took a drive to check out two other forest service campgrounds, Matterhorn and Sunshine, about 10 miles north, but weren’t all that impressed. We did have a good Verizon signal there, though. Since we only paid for two nights here, we will do some more exploring today to figure out where we’ll go next.

It wasn’t a good day for taking photos on our drive over Lizardhead Pass, which is over 10,000’, since it looked like this. The clouds were certainly interesting, though.

We drove around Trout Lake looking for boondocking spots

and came across this old trestle. 

 

This is beautiful country. If we’re lucky we’ll get to see it with the sun shining.

Still At McPhee Campground

 

A few days ago we moved to a new site, a private back-in without electric for $8.50. We hated being on the road in the pull-through site, and with the arrival of monsoon season, the thunderstorms have been cooling it off nicely in the late afternoons.

It’s a quiet campground, very few people here, but lots of deer and birds.

Black-headed grosbeak, first one we’ve ever seen.

It’s been fun visiting with Barbara and her cute little dog Katie. One night she joined us for dinner at the Dolores River Brewery. Too bad the place was packed (there aren’t many places to eat in Dolores, population 900) and we were told it would be an hour and a half for a pizza. They said a salad or sandwich would be quicker, so we tried that but it was still over an hour to get our food. Luckily we had beer to tide us over, although it wasn’t as good as what we had in Durango.

Friday was girls morning out, as Debbie, Barbara and I went to Cortez to do laundry and some shopping at Wal-Mart. I wasn’t sure we would get all of our clean laundry and groceries in the car, but we managed to cram it all in. Glad that’s done for another week or two.

We took a ride to Dolores to check out the gas and propane possibilities for when we leave. They have a small grocery store, the Dolores Food Market, that is very upscale, with organic produce and Whole Foods type items. The store also bakes home-made pies and they looked so good we just had to buy a rhubarb pie. Well let me tell you, they are as good as they say, much better than the $5 a slice pie we had in Pietown, NM a couple months ago. If you’re passing through Dolores, CO, be sure to stop and pick up a pie. That’s how pie crust should taste!

Downtown is home to a replica of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad depot, complete with a restored Galloping Goose that actually actually operates twice a year.

The seats were pretty comfy.

We also visited the Anasazi Heritage Center, which is the visitor center for Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, 30-40 miles west of Dolores, which we did not get to.

They have a very impressive collection of artifacts and a great hands-on exhibit area. You can also walk a half mile paved trail to some ancient ruins and an overlook.

Escalante Pueblo, from the 920’s AD.

The view from there.

Many of the trees and shrubs along the trail are labeled so we finally figured out that this is Mountain Mahogany.

i like the look of these small green pinecones, some dripping with sap.

And colorful juniper berries.

It’s been a pleasant week but today we head north into the San Juan Mountains for some higher elevations and cooler temps. We didn’t realize it would be this warm at 7,400’. Next week we’ll probably be complaining about the cold!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mesa Verde Continued…

 

Our tour of Balcony House ran over 10 minutes so we only had about 20 minutes to stop at the restrooms, get to the car, and drive a mile to the 11:30 start of the Cliff Palace tour.

Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in the park, consisting of 150 rooms, 23 kivas, and is thought to have housed about 100 people. We got a similar lecture from Ranger Paula about how strenuous the 100 ft climb and 5 ladders would be in the heat and altitude. Jim and I drank a bottle of water after the Balcony House tour, so we didn’t carry a bottle with us. She was not happy we didn’t have water but we assured her we just drank and were in good shape. She said those are the ones who “go down”! Good thing we didn’t pass out from heat stroke on the tour. Would have hate to hear “I told you so”. They raise some tough rangers here at Mesa Verde.

But it was another good tour and we learned more about the dwellings and their residents. At one point there may have been several thousand Puebloans living in pit or above ground houses on the mesa, or in the cliff dwellings in the protected alcoves of the canyon walls.

The ladders on this tour were only 8-10’ high and after Balcony House I was just going up them like they were nothing. The hardest part was the climb out of the canyon on many, many stairs. But we survived the hour without water.

After the tour we found a picnic table in the shade for lunch, then took the 6 mile Mesa Top Loop Road driving tour. There are 12 easily accessible stops along the route, including overlooks of more cliff dwellings and surface dwellings. Don’t leave your binoculars at home like we did.

We then stopped at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum, with interesting displays about the Ancestral Puebloans, and one more set of ruins, Spruce House, where you can do a half mile self-guided trail. It involved another 100’ descent and ascent but the ancient peoples had it much harder. They entered the dwellings by climbing the rocks using foot and hand holds and ladders.

We even got to go down into a kiva that had a reconstructed roof to give us a better idea of what they really were like. It was nice and cool in there.

We made one last stop before leaving the park to the fire tower overlook. Beautiful views!

Does anyone know what kind of plant this is?

 

Mesa Verde is an impressive park and we would like to go back in cooler weather, stay at the campground there, and do some more hiking and exploring.

And by pushing myself to the limit, I got a bit closer to overcoming my fear of heights. Yesterday I even climbed on the Lazy Daze roof for the very first time. Don’t know if I will be able to do it again, but it was a big deal for me.

Somehow I even managed to get back down, which was the hardest part!

Conquering Our Fears: Mesa Verde National Park

 

Cliff Palace, the largest dwelling in the park.

Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt, the first national park set aside “to preserve the works of man”. The park protects almost 5,000 archeological sites and 600 cliff dwellings, all inside of 52,000 acres of spectacular landscapes. So who would have thought a visit to this special place would cause us such trepidation?

Here I am with Debbie taking in the view from the waiting area for Balcony House.

While researching the park and which tours we might want to take, I discovered that seeing the cliff dwellings up close would involve some ladder climbing (something I am terrified of), and possibly crawling through a tunnel (which doesn’t bother me a bit but Jim and Debbie are claustrophobic).

We came to a consensus that if I was willing to do the ladders they would do the tunnel. I think they got the better deal since the tallest ladder was 32’ high, while the tunnel was only 12’ long. We purchased our tickets for 2 tours, and decided to do the most adventurous tour of Balcony House first. The hour long ranger guided tours cost a reasonable $3.00 per person, plus the $15 park entrance fee (free with the NP senior or annual pass).

By the way, Mesa Verde is a huge park and it was 15 miles from the entrance to the visitor center, plus another 10 miles to the Balcony House tour. Our guide was a very stiff, military-type seasonal ranger named Kevin. He spent the first 10 minutes describing every step of the trail along with warnings about fear of heights, claustrophobia, heart and breathing problems, etc, but nobody in our group of 20 bailed out.

After unlocking a gate and letting us go down to the base of the 32’ ladder, we stood around while he talked about what we would see and some of the theories about how the Ancestral Puebloans arrived there and built their homes in the cliffs. At least I think that’s what he was talking about, since I could only focus on the ladder in front of us. At that point I was too embarrassed to ask to go back, so I was committed.

Luckily it was a doublewide, so Jim went up beside me and talked me through. Debbie was right behind and offered words of encouragement, too. I must say if we had been alone and there weren’t all those people coming up behind us I would have frozen about midway. My hands were shaking and my heart was beating so fast by the time I got to the top, it took about 10 minutes before I felt normal again. But hey, I did it! Now I could focus on the tour and the several other shorter ladders were a piece of cake.

Another perspective.

Although we had toured the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico a couple months ago, this was still fascinating, and we just marveled at how difficult life must have been in 900-1200 AD.

One of the kivas, or ceremonial rooms. This would have had a roof over it.

    

Balcony House had about 40 rooms, and we can’t remember how many people may have lived there. They grew corn, beans and squash up above on the mesa and got water from a spring behind the dwellings. It is thought that the spring going dry possibly caused the Puebloans to leave the area by the 1300’s.

In spite of his seriousness, Ranger Kevin was a good tour guide, and we really enjoyed his obvious enthusiasm for the subject. In order to leave the dwellings, we still had to crawl through the tunnel, climb more ladders, and hold onto a chain while climbing up footholds in a rock face. Pretty exciting stuff for a national park tour!

 

This is obviously not a tour for large people, and they even have a replica of the tunnel at the visitor center. If you can’t fit in the replica, you can’t take the tour. Jim and Debbie made it through the tunnel unscathed, although they didn’t care for it much. I thought it was fun. I see no danger in crawling on the ground in a cave. At least there’s no chance of falling 32 feet!

That was just the beginning of our day at Mesa Verde. More to come in another post.