Mesa Verde National Park was one park that I am glad we took time to tour. We weren’t sure if we had time to fit this park into our schedule so I was not really planning on touring it. If we had drove by and not stopped I would have been very disappointed later when I found out what gem this park is. Where else can you tour cliff dwellings?

We arrived in the early morning and first stopped at the visitors center. I noticed that it said something about purchasing tickets so I thought I would stand in line and see what they were for. As I stood in line I read the posters that the tickets needed to be bought if you wanted to go down in to see the cliff dwellings. That sounded like lots of fun.

The next thing was to decide which place we would visit. I decided that not everyone would be thrilled with visiting the Balcony House since there was long ladders to climb and tunnels to crawl through. The Long house didn’t look as interesting so I chose the Cliff Palace.

Our tickets for our tour were not until 2 in the afternoon so we had lots of time to go sightseeing. The ride in was about 45 minutes and then we toured the museum and watched a film.

I was intrigued by the Square Tower house. Made me wonder how they built this tall building back then.

The Cliff Palace has steep stair steps to go down and four ladders to climb but it was a very enjoyable one hour tour. Our tour guide made it very interesting as he told about the people that used to live in these cave dwellings.

Even if you arrive later in the day and cannot get tickets to go into the cliff dwellings, this park is still worth driving through and viewing the cliff dwellings.

So if you are in Colorado in the area of the four corners make sure you stop in at Mesa Verde National Park.