Today we headed over to Mesa Verde National Park. We discovered that almost half the park is closed during winter months, but were still able to see a lot of ruins and a lot of great views. I'm amazed how well this stuff is preserved when it's 800+ years old and sitting outside.
We took a guided tour of the cliff palace ruin which was fantastic. It was quite large and fairly original (park service estimates that it's about 30% reconstructed). It's also an odd one because it has enough area to hold meetings and rituals for double the amount of people that could actually live there.
We went to most of the overlooks along the roads and trails. Some were just overlooks and some had good views of other village ruins.
A couple shots of a burnt forest. I don't recall the numbers but something like 30,000 acres of forest has burned through this park in the last 15 years including some areas around the buildings. It also appears that they've installed some sort of sprinkler system around the buildings and along roadways. I'm not sure how that will work but it all looks recently installed, no pictures of that unfortunately.
After the park, we took off for Durango. I've now learned that all camping is always closed in the rockies during "winter" months, which appear to extend through April. We had the same problem last year near Georgetown, but I figured we're at low enough elevation here to be o.k. No big deal, we found a nice hotel and showers will be nice.
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