{"id":2058,"date":"2017-09-01T22:28:51","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T02:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=2058"},"modified":"2017-09-01T22:28:51","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T02:28:51","slug":"mesa-verde-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=2058","title":{"rendered":"Mesa Verde National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was a relatively short trip from Blanding, Utah to Durango, Colorado with the tourist interest en route being Mesa Verde National Park<\/em>. I had only visited this park once before, in 1986, so it was about time.<\/p>\n

Some of the scenery in the park is quite impressive and there is one overlook, Park Point<\/em>, where you can see almost 150 miles in any direction on a clear day. It is used a a fire lookout station and today visibility was about 75 miles.<\/p>\n

However, the focus of the park is not scenic.\u00a0It is the largest archeological preserve in the US and researches, preserves and provides access to some 4,300 Ancestral Puebloan dwellings and is particularly famous for its large, well preserved cliff dwellings. I took a ranger led tour of Cliff Palace<\/em> which is thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. The height of the population here was between 1190 and 1260 when Cliff Palace was home to about 125 people but the ceremonial and storage buildings found here indicate that it was a cultural and political center for as many as 6,000 people in 25 pueblos. The tour was fascinating and, like almost everything the Park Service does, was educational and inspiring. The area was abandoned around 1300 for reasons that are not really understood.<\/p>\n

The map and road video can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The mesa is divided by a series of steep canyons and 600 cliff dwellings have been found just below the cliff tops.\"Mesa
\nCliff Palace is the largest and one of the best preserved.\"Mesa
\nOnly about 40% of the buildings here were domestic. In addition to food storage and meeting areas there are many round kivas, used for ceremonial purposes.\"Mesa
\nThe fire lookout station at Park Point has a 360 degree view over thousands of square miles.\"Mesa
\nThis is the view in one direction.\"Mesa<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a relatively short trip from Blanding, Utah to Durango, Colorado with the tourist interest en route being Mesa Verde National Park. I had only visited this park once before, in 1986, so it was about time. Some of the scenery in the park is quite impressive and there is one overlook, Park Point, … Continue reading Mesa Verde National Park<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,3],"tags":[47,46],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}