UnCaged Travels: Beautiful Colorado camping spots and Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park
September, 2019

If you have been reading all of our summer blogs you noticed that our summer journey has included a number of visits to National Parks in Arizona and Utah. The last National Park to visit on our summer trip was Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, CO. We have had this park on our radar for a couple of years now but other visits through the area had it being too hot or some of the tours were closed for the season.

But first we decided that we needed to find some mountainous terrain since we were in the desert area for the last week, so we headed to an area that we have driven through many, many times - Lizard Head Wilderness which is not far from Telluride, CO. The 42,296 acre wilderness area is located on the San Juan and Uncompahgre National Forests in southwest Colorado. It is so named after Lizard Head Peak which rises to 13,113 feet and is one of the most conspicuous rock spires in the San Juan Mountains. Once again we were lucky enough to find a great spot big enough for our motorhome with AMAZING views of the surrounding mountains.

Awesome camp site at 10,200 foot elev.

View from our camp site

Road 626 to our camp site

To access our site we took dirt road 626 which is also known as the Galloping Goose old railroad grade. Not far from our camp we visited one of the last remaining railroad trestles for the old narrow gauge Rio Grande Southern Railroad that was built through this area to serve the mines in 1890. "Galloping Goose" you say... yes the RGSRR struggled for many years since it was built in the silver mining boom years and upon just after completion, the silver crash of 1893 just about closed all the mines. In 1931 they couldn't afford to run the steam trains and invented the 'Goose' to run small passenger loads and some mail and freight around to the mountain towns which extended their business life until 1952.

Galloping Goose Train (photo from web)

Trout Lake Trestle

A curious Marmot on trestle

We also drove many other dirt roads in the area where some led us to lakes, vistas and trailheads.

It was definitely hard to leave the mountains but we traveled south just 55 miles to another site that was just as amazing. We dry camped right beside the Dolores River in a ranchers field that offered camping along the edge of their meadow. We opted to take the most level site and the bonus was a dock over the river. SCORE! This was our home base for fishing, 4-wheeling and visiting Mesa Verde National Park. Here we enjoyed lots of wildlife sightings, Jack was successful at fishing in the Dolores River and I read a good book. Plus the sounds of the river were soothing bed-time music.

enjoying the river peacefulness.

Some local wildlife checking out our campsite.

Rainbow Trout

Let's talk Mesa Verde National Park ! Mesa Verde NP was created in 1906 and encompasses over 52,000 acres. In that area they preserve and protect nearly 5,000 archaeological sites including 600 cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people. Around AD 1200 some of the Puebloan people living in the area moved from from their mesa top fields and into the cliffs and alcoves and these cliff dwellings are what makes Mesa Verde so popular as a National Park. There are many ways to explore and experience Mesa Verde - by vehicle, by hiking, or by ranger led tours. In addition to driving and hiking the park we opted for the ranger led tours for three of the more popular cliff dwellings so we could get that 'up close and personal experience'.

We first explored one of the best preserved sites in the park called Balcony House. This cliff house was constructed intermittently between AD 1180 to 1270. It is called Balcony House because of the primary architectural feature of 'balconies' between the first and second stories throughout the dwelling. These balconies were used to move from one second-story room to another and possibly used as work spaces also.

Climbing up ladder to access Balcony House

Balcony House through the window of time

Balconies between the dwelling floors

Corn grinding stones

Exit passageway

Exit ladder from dwelling back up to the parking lot

The tour for Balcony House entailed climbing three long steep ladders; navigating the steep cliff trail and crawling through a narrow 12 foot long tunnel. It was so interesting to hear the history and imagine how the Puebloan people lived and survived in this area.

Another tour was of the largest cliff dwelling in North America and rightly named Cliff Palace. The dwelling is made up of about 150 rooms, 75 open spaces and 21 kivas and was home to 100 to 120 people. All these structures fit in the alcove of about 215 feet wide by about 90 feet deep and 60 feet high. The tour itself was very informative and the trail we followed consisted of many uneven stone steps and climbing four ladders. During this tour we learned that the dwelling was built between AD 1190 to AD 1280 and that some of the original wooden timbers found in the dwelling were extremely valuable in providing these construction dates. It is surprising to see how precise and detailed the walls were put together and how straight-lined the T-shaped doors were and how square the windows were made. We were amazed at the degree of craftsmanship in the dwelling.

Can you see the exit route and exit ladders ?

We visited so many more dwellings in Mesa Verde NP but we will not expose you to our many, many photos but here is a couple that we thought you might enjoy. We highly recommend taking the tours offered at Mesa Verde NP.