Colorado Day 5: Mesa Verde National Park to Alamosa via Great Sand Dunes National Park:

 We woke up and had breakfast at Far View Terrace (it was Reed’s favorite breakfast of the trip). We were excited to visit several cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in person today on special ranger-led tours. This is also a World Heritage Site. The ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples lived in this area in large numbers (estimate of 40,000 people, most of whom were farmers and lived on top of the mesa). Around the year 1200, some of these people moved off the mesa and into the alcoves of the canyon walls that provided shade, shelter, and water in the form of seep springs. There were many of these (400-600) that have been found. Most were small and held just a few families but some were much larger. Each family had its own circular kiva used for ceremonies in the dwelling, so counting the number of kivas is a good estimate for the number of families in that dwelling. We visited Balcony House first - this required some scaling of walls via ladders and also climbing through narrow passageways and tunnels. This was the smaller dwelling we visited and was likely home to 1-2 families. We then visited Cliff Palace which had 24 kivas. The name is misnomer and it wasn’t a place of royalty or leaders, but just a larger collection of families. We marveled at the engineering of these structures and how well-preserved they were. I feel so fortunate we could visit and actually walk in these spaces because it seems like something that will not be allowed in the future. It is with appreciation to the modern Pueblo people that we are able to visit this space and learn about the people who lived in it. The historical record shows people started moving south in the late 1200s and 1300s and settled in areas that have current Hopi and Pueblo people living on them. 

We left Mesa Verde around noon and drove four hours east to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The goal was to get there for the end of the day and cooler temperatures we also rented a sandboard to play around on at the dunes. The Great Sand Dunes are over 30 square miles and formed from sediment from the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains that was once at the bottom of a large lake that dried up. The winds in the area keep piling the sand onto itself over and over. They are pretty stunning and one can see them from far away. These are North America’s tallest sand dunes - currently Star Dune is the tallest at 736’. Walking in sand is hard. No joke. To get to the dunes, it requires a half-mile walk across a flat sandy area. Then climbing the sandy dunes is also challenging and there are no trails as the dunes are continually being re-shaped. Reed and Charlotte had a blast with the sandboard and I had fun watching them have fun. After playing on the dunes for a couple hours, we headed south to Alamosa and grabbed Taco Bell on the way to the hotel. Reed and I had a fun in the pool - alternating cold plunges with the hot tub. We also saw a spectacular sunset from our room across the valley.