Mesa Verde National Park. Or: A lot of ladders and crawling.

Hallo meine Lieben,

still no power but I am so glad that I can schedule some posts here. I am sitting here at my parents-in-law's couch on Sunday afternoon working on my computer. 

Last summer David and I went on a road trip from Ohio to Colorado and Utah. You can read about our time at Arches National Park in Utah here. 
It was such a wonderful trip with lots of fabulous memories. I will never forget about it! Thank you again, Schatz, for this unforgettable trip. 

The only downside of the trip was that I got a really bad kidney infection after 2 days. I did not want to ruin the trip so I did not go to a doctor and just tried to keep going. It wasn't always easy with a 40 degree Celsius / 104 degrees Fahrenheit fever but I am a little proud that I did most of the stuff David planned. Although I wasn't able to go on long hikes.
In retrospect, it was a little irresponsible not to see a doctor. But hey, I really did not want to ruin the trip and wanted to be brave. 

On our trip we also visited Mesa Verde National Park. It was breath-taking!
Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. It features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the Ancestral Puebloan people. By 750 AD, the people were building mesa-top villages made of adobe. In the late 1190's CE, they began to build the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous.Mesa Verde is best known for cliff dwellings, which are structures built within caves and under outcropping in cliffs — including Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

So, I will share some of my pictures with you. The problem is that they don't do the place any justice.

A first overview. It really was breath-taking. I wish you would be able to see this in the pictures. But if you will ever be in the area you have to go and check out the place. It is so interesting.

This place is called "Balcony house". It included a lot of climbing which was pretty exhausting for me but it was worth every step. We had ranger Smith leading the way for us. 

They had some really bad forest fires a couple of years ago and a lot of parts of the park looked terrible like this.

A wild horse at the side of the road. I was fascinated. 

More climbing. I tried not to look down and everything went fine.

Spruce Tree House. It is the third-largest village, within several hundred feet of a spring, and had 130 rooms and 8 kivas. A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals. It was constructed sometime between AD 1211 and 1278. It is believed anywhere from 60 to 80 people lived there at one time.

David in front of the Spruce Tree House. Our guide Ranger Smith was a pretty funny guy and he told us all kind of interesting stories and answered all our questions.

We had to climb ladders and crawl on the ground a lot. It got pretty tight from time to time. 

It was hard to find your way there which was a pretty good protection against intruders. 

David has to crawl too. Some strange woman asked me if she can take some pictures of me crawling because she wanted to show them to her kids. I thought that was a little weird but let her take a couple of embarrassing pictures of me. 

Do you like National Parks? Which one is your favorite? Have you ever been to Mesa Verde National Park?

Have a lovely week!