Day 4: Unlawful Entry

We woke up very early and were out the door by 7:30. We wanted to get to Cliff Palace, the largest of the dwellings, and get out before the first official tour started at 9. FeloniousThunk had to dress in his full ranger gear, though it was his day off, so that we’d look the part of a ranger giving a tour (albeit to two people) in the event of our being accosted by park staff or nosy tourists. I remembered Cliff Palace from my last trip out to Mesa Verde and remember being disappointed by the fact that we couldn’t climb around in the dwelling and instead had to stand outside it while a ranger pointed to different things that we couldn’t really see because we weren’t allowed to go inside. Well, this time around we had a ranger to take us all the places that we weren’t supposed to go. FeloniousThunk called in our “tour” and we went down to the ruin.

Cliff Palace from the inside is phenomenal. Actually getting to step through the doorways and enter the rooms where ancestral Puebloans lived gives a much better sense of the history that emanates from such a place than merely walking by it and snapping some pictures. We were treading where ancient people lived and died, running our hands over the stones that they used to fashion their houses. We were careful not to leave footprints.

We spent a good hour in Cliff Palace, checking the orientation of the kivas (supposedly they all face south, but we found some that didn’t) climbing through doors and small openings and exploring every inch of the ruin until the “first” tour of the day showed up above us and we exited before having to answer any potentially incriminating questions.

After a quick stop for brunch back at the apartment, we headed out to Weatherill Mesa, a section of the park I hadn’t even visited during my family’s trip. Along the road, FeloniousThunk indicated that we should pull over into an unmarked and inconspicuous gravel driveway. We grabbed our gear and hiked to the edge of the mesa, where we found a trail marked by cairns. For those not in the know, a cairn is basically a pile of small rocks. The trail wound down the side of the cliff and led towards the cliff dwelling called Mug House. Apparently, people found mugs there.

Mug House is not shown on the Mesa Verde maps at the Visitor’s Center. It’s not open to the public. This is one of the advantages of traveling through a National Park with a ranger who is employed by that National Park. Once again, it was simply a matter of calling in to the dispatch center on the walkie-talkie and all was well. Mug House was a two-level dwelling with terraces out in front, one of the few ruins in the whole park to exhibit evidence of farming.

We spent a good amount of time looking around the ruin, peering into the kivas and admiring the wall art. I decided I wanted to try to get up to the second level of the dwelling, which looked like it would involve some climbing. I was admittedly out of practice when it came to climbing, but managed to clamber my way up a rock face on the northwest side of the ruin and make my way across a rock ledge to the ruin. I was quite proud of my little climb and spent a while exploring the parts of the ruin that Murph and Felonious didn’t feel like reaching. They shouted questions and requests as I moved through the various rooms. We were trying to interpret the strange rim that was around one of the windows. Later we decided they might have been designed to give a better seal when the stone doors were put in place.

Once I managed to get myself down (without falling, I’ll have you know) we headed down to Long House, which was an open ruin. You’d normally buy a ticket, but this was just the latest in a series of things we didn’t have to worry about thanks to our ranger guide. Of course, the tour was run by another ranger, who FeloniousThunk referred to as one of his “all-stars.” The ranger was understandably a little miffed about having to give a tour with another ranger in the tour, but Felonious promised not to upstage him.

There were only two other people on the tour, so it was definitely not close to the 60-strong tours that Felonious assured us were standard at the more popular sites. After cruising through Long House, which was interesting though not as fun as the two ruins to which we’d already had unfettered access, we headed for some mesa-top dwellings, which were inhabited by the Mesa Verde people (no, I will not call them Ancestral Puebolans) before they moved to the cliff dwellings.

By this point, the day was drawing to a close and Murph and I felt we needed to thank FeloniousThunk for his hospitality. So, we piled back into the car and headed to town. Now “town” happened to be the burg of Dolores, population 857, an hour’s drive from the park. However, it’s home to the Dolores River Brewery, which means that this small town possibly has more microbrew pints per capita than almost any other town in America. The beer there happens to be quite good, as is the pizza. After partaking of both in and exchanging various stories, we headed back to the car for the drive back to the park.

During this drive, the heavens opened in one of the more amazing thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced. The lightning lit up the landscape all around us. It was in the context of this environment that FeloniousThunk proceeded to unravel the tale that begat his nickname. Felonious, I must say that, though I have known some crazy females in the past, I’ve never had one frame me for domestic violence, so you take the cake.

On our return, Murph was feeling a little queasy from the winding road, the beers and possibly my less than stellar driving.

Day's Score:
Drinks: 2 (I was driving)
Miles: 80, mostly to and from beer
Ruins: 4