We arrived in Mesa Verde late afternoon and set up camp and had a long awaited shower (we hadn’t had one for more than 2 days). We also booked ourselves in for some tours of the cliff dwellings we had come to see. The weather was going to be perfect, sunny blue days and no freezing cold nights.

From approximately A.D. 600 through A.D. 1300 people lived and flourished in communities throughout the Mesa Verde area. Mesa Verde means “green table” in Spanish and represents the tablelands in an area of deep canyons and steep rock faces. The cliff dwellings only represent the last 75 to 100 years (two generations) of occupation at Mesa Verde, the primary theories about why they left include drought and over use of the land, forcing them to move south.

We spent the day touring a few of the 300 cliff dwellings in the area, and stayed another night in the campground.