Mesa Verde was the first national park to be designated for the human constructions that it contains rather than the natural features. The part contains the remains number of buildings from the Puebloan people, stone age farmers who lived here from about 550 CE to 1300 CE. Around 1190 CE they stopped building on the top of the mesa and started building under overhanging cliff faces. Nobody is quite sure why they did this. Possibly they ran out of land…
Today we visited the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, so I’m going to talk about zombies in Yorkshire. We were sitting in the lobby of the Far View Lodge in Mesa Verde National Park, and Paula wanted to show some of the other visitors a picture of our narrowboat, Wharram Percy. I did a quick Google of “narrowboat wharram percy” and the second result that turned up was Well, I’m happy to say that when I checked the article it…
Breckenridge is a ski resort trying to monetize summer as well, so the mountainsides that are defaced by ski runs are also full of well maintained trails used by hikers and mountain bikers. Pat tells us that the town as a five million dollar budget just for trail maintenance. The mountains above town are imaginatively named Peak 1, Peak 2, Peak 3, Peak 4, Peak 5, Peak 6, Peak 7, Peak 8, Peak 9, and Peak 10. I think they’re…
Last night was very windy. I had to get up in the middle of the night to take the tarp off the top of the tent as it was too noisy. Our tent is well ventilated – the inner tent is mostly netting, and the outer flysheet is staked out well away from the inner walls. This means no annoying condensation, but allows the cold wind to blast through the tent. The weather forecast said the wind would die down,…
We decided to go for an easier hike today, so we took the shuttle bus up to Bear Lake, and walked down to the next shuttle stop below, with a detour to explore the riparian environment of Glacier Creek. Meanwhile, back in the camp, something is smoking. What can it be? Let’s look inside. In the clouds of smoke there are ribs! And tofu?
It is a dead elk. It has shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir invisibule. Paula’s sister Pat arrived today, and we hiked the trail up to Cub Lake. It heads up the side of a glacial valley, along the edge of a lateral moraine, and past two elk skeletons. Cub Lake itself was less scenic that it had been before a big fire went through, and the weather was not so great up there so we headed…
We went over to the local visitor center and talked to the ranger there about mammals. The mountain goats and the moose were introduced and are not that welcome. The lack of wolves means that the elk are destroying the beaver habitat. They are trying to let the willows regrow by fencing off areas to keep the elk out, but they would really prefer a pack of wolves. The local landowners won’t let them import wolves, but if a pack…
The park has a shuttle bus system to get you up to the trailheads with limited parking. I went up to the Bear Lake trailhead. The view from the lake is very cool. However, the trail round the lake was packed with people, so I headed off on a side for a three and a half mile hike, half a mile uphill to shake off the riff raff, then three miles downhill to a different shuttle stop. At high altitudes…
The view from our campsite is most excellent. Paula has a minor heart condition which occasionally results in palpitations. Normally attacks only last a few minutes, but she had one that lasted all night, probably triggered by the altitude, so we went into the emergency room to make sure that everything was OK. By the time we got there the attack was over, but they kept her under observation for a while, and she had another little one while she…
We bid farewell to the Super 8, with one more shower and a top up of the ice in the cooler, not to mention first and second breakfast. We followed the Google Maps fastest route to our campsite in Rocky National Park. In retrospect I should have been a bit more inquisitive about the roads. Turning onto Colorado Highway 1 there is a friendly unofficial sign: “IT’S A DIRT ROAD TO HIGHWAY 9 BUT YOUR CAR WILL BE OK”. I…