Today was an amazing day because we spent almost the entire day checking out the different Cliff Dwellings in Mesa Verde. I have always wanted to see these ruins and finally I did, and let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint. The first ruins we visited was the Cliff Palace ruins. This dwelling is the biggest in North America and is approximately 700 to 900 years old.

After the Cliff Palace we went to the Balcony House. This was an extremely intimidating hike for me. To get to the cliff dwellings you have to go down a huge amount of stairs and from there it gets really tricky. You have to climb up a 32 foot ladder. I am not particularly afraid of heights but I got pretty freaked out by this. It was a huge ladder over an even bigger cliff. It also didn’t help that the ladder got super heated so it burned to hold onto the rungs. By the end I was ready to freak out. Can you tell by my face that I was slightly concerned?

I made it though and it was worth it. At the top we got to go through the dwellings which were significantly smaller than the Cliff Palace but still very interesting. It had an overlook over a huge canyon without any walls to separate you from the huge drop.

The big ladder was not the only difficult part of tis trek. You also have to pass through a tunnel only 18 inches wide. INCHES not feet, think about it. It was not for the faint hearted but I didn’t think it was that difficult.

It was really funny watching people trying to squeeze into the tiny space. What is interesting about this is that it was really the only way out of the cliff dwellings during the 11 hundreds and 12 hundreds besides a foot hold climb up a 150 foot wall. So that means every day to go anywhere the inhabitants had to go through this tunnel. After this there were two more 15 feet ladders for us to climb but with the idea that the inhabitants had much worse to go through it wasn’t as bad.

The last ruins we saw was the Spruce Tree House dwellings. This one was really fun because you could go right into the living spaces and felt more interactive than the other ruins.

We ended the day here in Colorado springs and we are almost done with our trip. Just a few more days until we get to Michigan. I hope to have more time soon to go back over some of these posts and make new posts with more details and more photos. Stay tuned.