The tour was now officially over but we still had to make our way back to the rim.
Haha! I doubt the Ancestral Puebloans needed a sign!
Stairs...
... one ladder...
... two ladder...
... and back on the rim!
Looking over at the spot we started from
Apparently we walked right past this giant structure and didn't even know it!
The tour groups continue.
Our next tour was at 11:00 am at Balcony House. So we headed slowly over, stopping at a couple overlooks along the way.
Stop number one: Cliff Canyon Overlook
This canyon was filled with cliff dwellings.
House of Many Windows
Site 634 supposedly has 16 rooms and two kivas. Don't know where they put it!
Sun Point Dwelling...
... has 3 rooms perched on a shallow 100-foot ledge.
Sun Temple...
... is a mesa top structure.
Who would EVER think to put a home here?!
Stop two: House of Many Windows Overlook. Like all cliff dwellings, these openings aren't really windows but rather doors that could have been covered with stone slabs or animal hides. Four doors remain in the original 11 rooms. Above this is a toe hold trail that leads to the upper alcove and another room or two. From there, the toe hold trail continues to the mesa top. For them, the nearest water source would have been all the way at the end of the valley, below Sun Temple.
The lower and upper alcoves
I see absolutely NOTHING that looks like a path!
Stop three: Hemenway House. Sitting in an alcove above Soda Canyon, this dwelling is named after Mary Tileston Hemenway (1820 -1894), who financially supported the first archeological research in the Southwest. She supported a number of educational and historical projects after the Civil War.
Mary Tileston Hemenway
The sun had started to come out as we waited for our ranger. It turns out it was Abby again, from yesterday's Long House tour. There were about 40 people, including a lot of uncontrolled kids. By this time, we had heard most of the information already, but we still managed to learn a few new things.
Balcony House is a one-hour tour involving climbing a 32-foot ladder, crawling through an 18-inch wide 12-foot long tunnel, and climbing up a 60-foot open cliff face with stone steps and two 10-foot ladders. Wow! We had our work cut out for us! The cliff dwelling was located in an alcove beneath us, so we couldn't see it from where we were standing... but a sign with a photo from the other side of the canyon showed us our route.
And so we headed off...
Our path was take us down the cliff (on the right), through the cliff dwelling (center) and then back up to the mesa top (left).
Abby tells some history. She also rattled off the 21 tribe names. Almost. It seems everyone always forgets just one.
Down a loooooong flight of stairs
We stopped at an overhang just before heading up to the cliff dwelling.
This was a seep spring. Balcony House actually had two (the second one being behind the building). There are around 280 seep springs now in Mesa Verde. It is possible there were a lot more back then. The water also attracted animals.
Heading up the ladder, side by side
