Today we have another National Park to rave about. Mesa Verde was quite an experience, and incredible history.
But first… the overnight. Mesa Verde is known as a dark sky park since there isn’t much around here. And as Rick stated yesterday, we are super close to the park and therefore reason would have it that we might be able to see some great astronomy just from our campground. It would be plenty of work (aka too much for us) to unhook and drive up to the park in the middle of the night in order to have the full experience. Whether you agree with us or not, it is our line that we really haven’t wanted to cross. Therefore, we went to bed early and set our alarm for an overnight trek just outside of the RV. Lucky me, the Needy Bichon had me up even before the alarm. We got outside in the middle of the night, disappointed that there were some really bright lights right here on our campground. Yes, I realize that they are for safety but they also diminish our dark sky opportunities. Nevertheless, we saw some amazing stars, much more than Northeast Ohio. We even saw some shooting stars. But we have much more to learn on how to best optimize our opportunities to see the Milky Way, which is likely to involve us getting away from the light that seemingly every campground needs to have. Someday… maybe later in this trip! But we had a great experience and still had a great night’s sleep.
This morning, we were very excited to get to the park, knowing we had a great view right from our campground
This park gave us yet another opportunity for incredible elevation gains, over 1,500 feet from our campground. My great big question, knowing a little about the park before we arrived, was not so much how did these dwellings get created, but how did anyone ever find them???? The answer is that a couple of ranchers found this in the late 1800’s. I do still wonder why ranchers were way out there, by the way… But by the early 1900’s, it became a National Park. The amount of infrastructure to create the roads, overlooks, and shelters around this space are a gift to all of us. It’s the theme of the National Parks; they are a gift. This one also gets a strong recommendation for you to visit.
So as we reflect on today’s visit, I think about how much our lands are so much older than the 200+ years of USA. This civilization was here for over 700 years and migrated elsewhere by the year 1300. We don’t really know why they moved away, but let’s face it, this was a challenging place to live. The thought is perhaps that they went where there was a better water supply, which totally makes sense. This place is SUPER dry, with humidity not being higher than the low teens for days. Mesa Verde National Park clearly educates us about the civilizations that have inhabited our lands before us, and I am grateful that the NPS exists to teach us about this and help us to respect these lands, and their history.
We were back at our campground by mid-afternoon, just in time for the winds to pick up again and the clouds to roll in. This made for some great quiet time for the rest of the day as we get ready to arrive in Utah tomorrow. While we have had a wonderful experience to date, this will be my most anticipated part of the trip!!
Tonight is expected to be our first real freeze as well, so we are preparing the RV accordingly. We will have our facuets on drip overnight to keep the water going, especially since this campground doesn’t seem to have the lines heated. Our tank heaters will be on as well. I am sure we will be fine as we learned these lessons last year! We knew that some freezing was likely to be the case on this trip, but we are also glad to be beating the crowds so far. Our upcoming stops will be much more crowded than our experience to date, but less so than if we waited a few more weeks. So we will manage the overnight cold as seasoned RV’ers!!
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