Mesa Verde

Today we headed to Mesa Verde. While there, before we even saw any cliff dwellings, we learned: (a) we should keep wild life wild, (b) we should both bring water and not bring drinks on our walk to the first cliff dwelling we went to, and (c) there's something called Mormon Tea that grows in the area (we thought 2L might enjoy the sign).

Next, we hiked down to Spruce House, and were able to walk around parts of that cliff dwelling.

In addition to seeing Spruce House up-close, we were also able to see Cliff Palace (the largest cliff dwelling) from a number of vantage points along a drive through the park. We also got to see several other cliff dwellings from afar, and we were amazed at how many there were.






In addition to these kinds of dwellings, we saw several wild flowers. We have no idea of what these were.



Tonight, we're in Delta, UT, which, according to the front desk guy at the motel here, is in the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow we venture to our bonus park of the trip: Great Basin. (This also gives us our ninth, we think, national park of the trip.)