We left Durango and headed back to Mesa Verde today with friends Keith and Mary Kay Jones. There is an awful lot to see in this park and we want to return to take some of the ranger-led tours of the cliff dwellings.
We started by driving down the Chapin Mesa to the Cliff Palace Loop drive. We viewed from a distance the Cliff Palace, largest cliff dwelling in North America, and the Hemenway House cliff dwelling. Then we drove the Mesa Top Loop where we viewed earlier pithouse remains which were occupied before the cliff dwellings. We also viewed from a distance the Square Tower House and the collection of cliff dwellings seen from the Sun Point viewing area. We could see the Sun Temple from that area as well.
From there we drove to one of the two restaurants and had lunch. After lunch we said our good-byes to Keith and Mary Kay as they had arranged to take two ranger-led tours in the afternoon and one more tomorrow. Rita and I visited the nearby Chapin Mesa Museum with artifacts from the hundreds of archaeology sites in the park.
After the museum we drove the long winding road to the Wetherill Mesa where we took a shuttle tram to some of the views of cliff dwellings on this mesa. We saw the Long House and Kodak House cliff dwellings from a distance then had to leave as it was getting late in the day. We drove to Shiprock, New Mexico and a short distance to view the large rock known as Shiprock. Finally we drove to Farmington where we checked into our hotel. We had a nice dinner at the Three Rivers Brewery. What three rivers you ask? The Animas, La Plata, and San Juan Rivers meet up somewhere in the vicinity. We have crossed over all three rivers earlier on this road trip.
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