Archaeology and Mesa Verde

As some of you may know, I was attempting to become an archaeology minor in college. In doing that I did an actual archaeology practicum my last summer in college. This was right about the time that I met Christy.

Anyhow, we were up in Ridgefield, Washington digging an old village there which Lewis and Clark had encountered on their way through. It was a killer experience and I still enjoy hearing anything about the past and history and dirt today.


And then along comes Mesa Verde National Park.

It is an archaeologists dream. There are pits and hearths and post holes and all kinds of pre-history there. I kept snapping photos and lingering around all the sites, while Chris and the girls kept wanting to move on. Pretty sad, I know - but when you're the only boy amongst a bunch of women, sometimes you just want to play in the dirt a little.

I won't bore you with too many pictures of the actual dig sites, but here are a few shots to check out:


Most of the actual ruins, you can't go inside and check stuff out. There is only one of the cliff dwellings you can tour yourself. And you can't go inside of the dwellings. You can just tour it unaccompanied by a ranger. So most of the shots of the ruins will be from some distance away.

However, for a small fee you can pay to take a tour with the ranger as part of a big group or a smaller group. We opted for the bigger group, which was cheaper.

Here you can get a feel for the scale of the cliff dwelling ruins. They are definitely pretty cool.

And here, for anyone who might be interested, is a local inhabitant. They're not really too hip on having their pictures taken, so it's rare to get a quality shot like this one. Oh, did I mention I took this picture?


For the most part Mesa Verde is a place where an archaeology loving type of person might be happy. And other more normal people will be content to just spend a little time there checking out the cliff dwellings and then moving on.