Hello kind readers!
As you may have noticed, I'm catching up on a few blog posts. I recently took almost a year's worth of pictures off my camera and found some gems hidden in the more than 1,000 unseen pictures. There are a few events and places I'd like to share with you even though it was a while ago now, so let's continue! Next up is southwestern Colorado.
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During the winter, I took the long journey home, traveling more than 24 hours from Grenoble to Denver to go home for the holidays. I've been realizing more and more how much I love being home with family during this time of year. It is truly a special time.
After the festivities of Christmas, and before welcoming in the New Year, my family and I drove to southwestern Colorado for an adventurous getaway. Our main destinations: Mesa Verde National Park, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and Wolf Creek Ski Resort.
Mesa Verde is best-known for its cliff dwellings where the Ancestral Pueblo people built villages into the sides of steep cliffs. These people called this area home between AD 600 to 1300, and then seemed to disappear, leaving little to no clue where an entire people could have gone. The national park protects and continues to study these cliff dwellings and various archeological sites.
I found this area to be very interesting, marveling at the thought of climbing a cliff to go home. With the help of the archeologists and the park, the cliff dwellings are kept in quite good conditions. While not able to enter the cliff dwellings in winter, we saw them from afar and even had a hike along a snowy road where we saw wild horses and observed the aftermath of a forest fire.
Next up was Canyons of the Ancients National Monument where we went for a muddy day hike. The area is protected by the Bureau of Land Management and includes hiking trails and one of the highest concentrations of archeological sites in the U.S. We took a long hiking loop across red rocks, through muddy pits, and with incredible views of rock formations and reaching landscapes.
Coming to the end of our getaway, we brought in the New Year with some powder at Wolf Creek, a nice little ski resort that wasn't too crowded and quite affordable, and a few hours of hot springs on our way home.
It was a fun adventure to an area I had never been. I learned more about the history of my home state and continue to be fascinated by its beauty, history, and culture. I would absolutely recommend this area to any visitors wanted to know more about southwestern Colorado.
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| Mesa Verde Cliff Palace |
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| A view into the dwellings |
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| Wild horses in Mesa Verde |
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| Hiking in Canyons of the Ancients |
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| Rock formations in Canyons of the Ancients |
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| Yes it was winter, as you can see in this shot taken on the drive home. |
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