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and it's really far away from our home base and it's also in colorado which we wanted to explore
states other than Colorado but it happened to be on our way
and when we were originally planning our route and all of the COVID stuff happened we thought
it was going to be closed because it was closed there wasn't a reopen date but they have opened
it now with limited availability so I have a feeling a lot of the national parks this year
are going to be open in this way where they're open but they're open with limited resources
so it'll be interesting to find out what exactly that looks like and what exactly that means
so we're going to kind of find that out today and see what is available what's not but we're
still going to be able to check this national park off of our list and add our little national park
sticker to the rv and say we've ticked one more off the list so it's pretty exciting to be able
to be here today so since the visitor center is closed they do have an app that you can download
that has the maps so I just finished downloading the app it's a pretty dang big app it's a good
thing I have lots of room on my phone um but it also has the ability then where you can download
the junior ranger books and print them out and then be able to mail them in how you doing
got one of these guys yeah one one nine seven zero seven five
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one two one two three four
so one of the things that we are finding here as we are driving around through the park is just
that um there's a lot of the cliff dwellings that would normally be open for viewing that are not um
so we're gonna go down this path and hopefully be able to view this one at least from a distance
but when it's fully open and fully functional there's a lot more that you can see we knew that
we weren't going to have all of those things available and it was just going to be a crapshoot
on what we could see but we're going to go down here and uh take a look and see what we can
at least see from this vantage point behind me here is one of the cliff dwellings that you can
actually get a pretty good view from from this overlook now normally you would be able to do
ranger-led tours into some of these but not right now but I would still say it's definitely worth
it and I'm really glad that we decided to come up here to be able to see this because it's
very very impressive these were discovered actually by ranchers in the 1800s and then
you know basically reported to the department of interior that these were here in existence
so it's kind of interesting to think what it would have been like as a rancher
and then just stumbling upon this you know every time that we come to a place like this where you
see kind of like you know ancient communal style dwellings it just um makes me realize
how much that sometimes I miss like community and how community sometimes just makes life so much
easier when you know you would have had this type of communal lifestyle
even with having kids and you know everybody's kids are running around with everybody else's
kids and everybody's just kind of watching out for the kids and it just makes life a ton easier
when you're doing life with other people and I think that that is one thing with rv life that
sometimes can be a little bit difficult at times is having that sense of community even though
you have the rv community and you meet people along the way but then you tend to part ways and
and go your own separate ways so it's always super fun when you can meet up with people on the road
and have that sense of community but I think there's just something to be said
for when you do life with others and when you have that sense of community and when
you have your tribe and when you have that type of support system for just doing life
in general which obviously these ancestral pueblos that's what they did in that obviously made life
easier for them they thrived in that environment and that's what they wanted because I mean they
built their dwellings where they would all be together in community and so I think there's
a lot to be said for that and I think there's a good lesson that we can all learn from that
um and what can we all do you know to try to create that sense of community as best
as possible when we're living life on the road so that was definitely worth the view um to be able
to see it and you could actually see it really really well from that particular overlook so
definitely worth coming out we kind of weren't sure what all we would be able to see how close
but that was a great view um to be able to see that one particular dwelling tons that were there
so definitely worth it this is a little bit of a hike a little high elevation going down was easier
than going up so one thing with the hiking trails here that we've done and I know looking at the map
there's a ton more hiking trails but something to remember is this
is very much a kind of high desert type of climate so it is very dry so bringing some water
is a really good idea just because just it's so dry it's also high in elevation and so
usually the higher in elevation that you are the easier it is for your body to become dehydrated
so that's something you definitely want to remember is plenty of water when you
come out and you do any of the trails here at mesa verde so there's a fork in the trail so
right or left I'm thinking right no there's there's three forts although it does look
like look if you look out there do we think that well we were standing underneath it though at the
other place i don't know I bet it loops I think it loops around all right well we're gonna see
find out here
oh we were like almost right on top of it weren't we almost
see there was gonna be a trail leading down to that right
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okay so we are going to head down the soda canyon overlook trail um we were actually
just uh what trailer were we on it wasn't a trail or what it was where if you had the ticket a tour
for what's called balcony house it basically we were standing on top of where that would be and
normally when the parks fully open then you can get a ticket a tour to go down to balcony house
but that's not available right now so we're gonna do the next best thing and go take the soda canyon
overlook trail it's about a 1.2 mile hike so we're gonna go ahead and check it out so kind of across
this direction you can see what's called the balcony house and you know it's cool looking but
it's not as good of a view as the other one which is the spruce house i believe that we saw um from
the one overlook there so overall um I'm glad we came it was definitely worth it it was worth the
stop it was worth the extra time to see what we were able to see even with the limited ability
we'll be printing out the junior ranger books for the kids so they can fill those out and
we'll mail those in so they can get their junior ranger badges for this particular national park
and we can check it off our list and put our sticker on the RV saying we've been here but
just if you come this year in 2020 be prepared check the website to know that it's going to
be a little bit more of a limited experience I am glad we came but um this is a little disappointing
that you know we didn't quite get the full-on experience but that's okay
things are what they are and it was definitely still worth coming but about now I'm hungry
and kind of like over mesa verde and I'm ready to go get some lunch so we're gonna hit the road and
go into Cortez Colorado and fuel up and get something to eat and call this a wrap
on mesa verde national park um so like what I really really didn't like about this place is like
all the cave drawings looked the same what did you like about it I thought it was like cool
because I don't think I've ever seen any cave drawings or something like that but I'm really
sad that we didn't get to do the tours yeah you're gonna put that back up so what he said
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